Re: stimulative spring feeding

On Sun, 7 Sep 2003 23:19:00 +0100, "Tim Whittingham"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>
>"Tim Arheit" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> On Tue, 2 Sep 2003 11:15:10 +0100, "Tim Whittingham"
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>Thanks Tim. That explains a lot, but I am still puzzled. Ted Hooper says
>spring feeding has little or no effect. You say it works well. Can it be
>different in the US? Why the wildly different experiences?
>
>Tim W
>
>


I can't explain the differences easily.  There are many different
factors. Temperature, amount of pollen coming in, and breed of bees to
name a few.  Italians for example, repond well to stimulative feeding
and are quite willing to raise brood just about all though the winter.
They also tend to have large winter populations and use a large amount
of honey over the winter.  In contrast I'm told carnolians are
stimilated more by pollen, and shut down brood production when it
isn't available resulting in smaller winter populations and more
efficent use of stores during the winter.  I expect that they would
not respond as much to stimulative feeding unless pollen substitute
was also provided.  Even with a pollen substitued I wonder if they
would respond as quickly due to a smaller cluster untill the weather
got warmer and allowed them to keep a larger brood area.  I don't have
enough experience with them to say.


-Tim