Are you going to give them extra feed like sugar bricks to get them
through the cold and long wet winter? How long winter usually last anyway?
For temperate Aussie, around 3.5 months BP.
For us in the Tropics the winter you speak of is nonexistant, maybe a few hours
on the odd day here and there in June, around the Solstice times.
Our 'winter' is right now, as it has been raining (no bee flying) for nearly a month
now and that at close to max brood nests when it started, so most if not all those
young bees will die... leaving a huge problem for those running borderline
colonies due to enthusiastic extraction (harvesting).
Where temperate zones might get a few fly days here and there in Winter we do
not in the Wet, and when it does cease raining for a day or two the flora is all
stuffed/buggered/shagged as the flowers are washed out or dead from flood
waters.
Simply put.. it aint "cold" but it IS the same penalty, for bees.
And no, I do not feed. I refuse to go there and set my colonies
to accomodate these times, as I strongly believe all beekeepers
everywhere _should_ be doing.
Buuuuuut, honeybandits are everywhere these days so each to their
own, I reckon.
Bill