Feeding bees early in spring

[Normandie]

Discussing our bees with a French beekeeper earlier today, we outlined what we'd done early in the season - several feeds of about 100g / 150g each time of fondant - and he was quite dismissive. He puts half a kilo or even a kilo at a time on top of the frames when the weather begins to warm up but not many flowers are available for the bees.

Is that okay? Were we starving our bees by only giving them 100+grams every couple of days?

 

[hedgerow pete]

in a word no
i only feed my ladies little and often i want them to fill the hive up on there own, i prefere to feed when they need it to allow them to start to grow but not to feed so much as they use up all the storage and brood cells which they will if they could, a kilo is not a large amount by any standard , i would be happy feeding them that over a two week period but would not bother with much more,

there is the opposite arguement to me and this is , if you stick a large amount of food than i would normaly and add to it some syrup as well the queen thinks, yippee summer is here i will start to lay eggs like no ones bussiness and you will quicken the breeding of new bees so increasing stocks ready for a particula harvest of honey say oil seed rape,

me personaly i just keep bees if i was to be more interested in say honey production then i would change my bee type to a early breeding type and i would certainly start to super feed, but i dont because i have what i prefere to have and they work well for me