"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2013-01-04 16:53:09 +0000, Ophelia said:

"Sacha" wrote in message
...

That's really interesting, Sacha. I loved that link.
Well, perhaps feeding them honey is not such a good idea, but leaving
them with the fullness of their own supplies, is, to my mind. Your
bees
may vary ;~).

I no longer have bees but I'm inclined to agree with you, at least this
last year and probably 2013, too. They had such a rotten cold winter,
then
a horrible wet summer!

I have friends in Yugoslavia who keep bees. They seemed to take all the
honey and during the winter feed them sugar water. That is possibly
where I
got the idea to feed that bee with that. I had forgotten till now
--

I suspect different practices depend on different beliefs, as well as
different climates. When I had bees, we took the honey off in late July.
This gave the bees plenty of time to build up a stock for themselves for
the winter, too. But if it was a very cold winter (unusual in Jersey) we
gave them a sugar syrup solution. I only had one hive and the least I
ever had was 25lbs in one season and the most around 80lbs. They were an
amazingly good strain and both well-behaved and highly productive.

I expect you are right. I don't really know how much they took off, but
whenever I was there in the winter Josko went out with his bottles of sugar
water to feed them.
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