Argument decider.

[Finman]

Looking at forecast?

they are valid 5 days.

Brood cycle is 3 weeks

I trust on sun shine angle. It is every year the same.

I start patty feeding on second week of April. Willow starts blooming 3 weeks later. Emerging workers get fresh pollen on their first days.

 

[oliver90owner]

Encouraging early brooding has little to do with current weather. It is a case of deciding when you expect your colonies to be collecting and storing excess nectar. For a strong colony it requires at least 2 brood cycles to get the first proper foragers of the season (w bees will be dying off).

With the recent trends of unpredictable temperatures when OSR should be blooming (and being warm enough to produce plenty of nectar), I would agree that early feeding is a lottery. Think back about 4/5 years when the OSR was well in bloom by the first week in April, but was still in flower up to the last days of May. Many were feeding their colonies well into May, without the bees collecting enough for survival!

I went to Spain for a week, then needed to remove the supers I had provided (expecting them to be filled on my return) because the weather was so lousy. Not been much better recently either, at times.

It still makes no difference to the answer for the OP. 1:1 for encouraging brooding.

 

[Heather]

I am shook swarming all my colonies this year so big 1:1 feed when done and again a week later to get that wax build up.
But with the forecast in the South of UK looking warmer than usual, I have itchy fingers to do earlier than I thought in late March...Grrrr UK weather

 

[user 6228]

the winter bees like all bees have a limited flying time then they die.
do you really want to use some of that time ripening sugar syrup?

 

[Heather]

I have brood developing now. Bringing in pollen, busy as soon as sun on the hives.

 

[REDWOOD]

the winter bees like all bees have a limited flying time then they die.
do you really want to use some of that time ripening sugar syrup?

They don't ripen 1:1 they use it for energy, feeding brood or in Heather's case making wax, they don't need to fly anywhere

 

[Tremyfro]

A couple of years ago....I wanted to make some nucs in the spring. So I put a brood box above a strong colony and put some brood comb with eggs in it....the rest of the brood box had foundation. Between the two boxes I put another brood box which had comb some of which was filled with honey. I put a queen excluder above the main colony. I tried my hand at making queen cells..ha ha...my bees chortled about that.
Above the lot I put a feeder with 1:1 syrup.
The bees ignored my queen making activities and made their own queens. They also took all the syrup .....built loads of comb and filled it with the syrup.
I was able to use that comb to give to the nucs I made up and the main hive went on to make honey in the added supers.
...and I learnt a lot about what happens when you feed syrup...
....and I learnt about how much better the bees are at making their own queens
....and I learnt that if the bees have either a nectar flow or a syrup flow...they will build lots of comb.
So when I do my swarm control by doing sideways demarree in the Beehousies....I will feed the syrup if there is no flow of nectar...which is likely unless the weather really does settle into a good spring and summer.