Indeed, if you feed them enough they will manage to overwinter. Most bees will overwinter if you give them loads of feeding.
That was not the point. Even they could get enough for their own needs and could survive perfectly well in a zero feeding situation if you never disturbed the bottom two boxes.
BUT
Given lots of space they were deceptive, because at end of season the bottom box was often completely empty and the second box lighter than we would like. We take away as much of the honey as we can.....even from the black bees which tend to be heavy in the bottoms...............and add several bars of foundation into the nest in September. Anything with cecropia in it that we have tried has been unsuitable in that respect. Thus EVERYTHING needs a winter feed here, irrespective of race.
When a colony gets to 5 deeps high on the flow, and the season comes to an end, and box 4 was being worked wall to wall before you added no5, you kind of expect a decent return out of it (we are talkng deep boxes here, at the heather). The returns are always dissappointing with this type of bee (in our environment) compared to others alongside, as the hives are very light low down and could easily have put everything into a 3 box stack. They are not a disaster, but just not as productive at the end of the day than other strains and races (not ALL races).
We are not actually interested in bees that are just 'good survivors' as this is a managed situation, but have leaned from direct experience that cecropia aint a suitable bee for us................ditto ligustica (worst), and macedonica. Caucasians bring other issues including slow build up at OSR time and a tendency to collapse with viruses in late winter. (This has been the case throughout the experience of both myself and my father, back to the 1950s and has not changed.) Other types do just fine.
A lot of people further south than us have excellent experience with cecropia however, so the label 'cheap Greek bees' is not fair. If the bee suits you you could just as easily say 'overpriced French/British' queens.
The price of queens is more a reflection of the economics of the source rather than the worth of the bees. If queen breeding is as easy as falling off a log, and the wages are not too high, and the exchange rate is favourable, then the queens tend to be cheap. If on the other hand it is difficult, or in a high wage and exchange rate area, then like for like, they will be expensive. All this before you throw in specialist knowledge and techniques for developing strains (of which we have a couple of real experts on the forum). It is perfectly possible to get good bees for a reasonable amount of money. Knowing where is another matter altogether.
