>No, I do not. I seriously doubt that the bees consuming the winter stores where
even around when that honey was stored.
The last of it was stored in the fall when brood rearing had tapered off. I'm quite sure there are bees that were alive when that occured. A young field bee that only made a few hundred trips to that super would remember where she was storing things.
Regardless the bees are investigating the hive and discovering where things are if it is warm enough to do so even if they didn't store it, which is why I would put the honey on early. It's also why you often succeed in just plopping a super of honey on even in the middle of winter. A few warm days can make a huge difference in the end results. After they are clustered exploring is only possible on a warm day. Part of the problem is also the gap between the lower box (with the cluster) and the upper box that has been added. Will they cross it? If they know something is there, yes. If not, then they may assume they ran out of honey.
>There are other factors that can contribute to a colony starving, not simple because it ran out of stores. During extended cold periods the bees may lose contact with the
honey due to a tighter cluster and then starve. There is also population and health going into winter.
Certainly these are all factors. But bees are raised not only in vertical hives, such as we have but trough hives such as many people in the world use and in fallen hollow trees as well as upright hollow trees and in attic rafters etc. The point being that not all hives are vertical and the honey is often horizontal. They seem to survive quite well in these hives in spite of the fact that the honey is not overhead. So they will move sideways to find honey as well as up.
>The bees might not have moved into the added super simple because their mass was not big enough, I doubt it very much that the reason was "they did not know it was there".
It's simply a matter of continuing their upward movement in either case. What does mass have to do with it? It's not unusual to find a cluster "between" boxes with part of the cluster below and part above. This is just a gradual migration, not a wholesale move.
>Bees locating their hives from a distance and bees knowing the contains of the hive are two totally different subjects.
Different but similar. Both require a mental map. If the issue is what their brains are capable of, mapping a lot of terrain is more complex than mapping a small hive.
>My dog knows her way home too if I drop her off anywhere in a two mile radius but she doesn't know that there is a steak in the freezer.
I bet your dog would know it was there if she put it there.
>No I do not beleive that they have a set (go no further) upper limit. I beleive that the normal winter movement of a cluster
is up, always up.(Instinct again) As long as there is honey in the upway direction, the bees will migrate up.
You are entitled to you opinion. They will go up if it warms up long enough for them to find the honey there. I still think it's better to add the honey early rather than late. If you don't like my intial reasons, try an early winter and you don't want to open it up and let all the heat out.
Certainly in a warm climate this is all unimportant because they always have warm days to explore and rearrange stores.