[A Novice]

I suspect that it depends somewhat on which sort of bees you have.

Some bees produce brood in conditions where others don't.

 

[A Novice]

I've always heard they won't brood till the first natural pollen flow, sub won't start it. I think they store away any you give them in the WInter, patties just keep them from regressing on rainy days, also it takes more than one pollen source to reach the 12 amino acids needed to produce worker /drone/royal jelly.

Randy Oliver did a nice comparison study of several pollen subs a few years back. The result was bees will brood up on just pollen sub, but not all pollen subs are equal. If I can find it, I will post a link.
Edit: here is the link.

A Comparative Test Of The Pollen Subs (Part 1 & 2) - Scientific Beekeeping

A Comparative Test Of The Pollen Subs (Part 1 & 2) Part 1: Experimental Design And Execution Randy Oliver ScientificBeekeeping.com This article was originally published in the July – Sept 2014 ABJs Introduction The growth and health of honey bee colonies is primarily dependent upon the...

scientificbeekeeping.com

You can find a lot more at scientificbeekeeping.com, but that is a good start.

 

[A Novice]

yeah, but that's in the Fall. I mean open feeding dry pollen sub, I wouldn't open a hive to put patties on till after the natural pollen flow, just in case they get cooped up and run out, they won't cannabilize the brood.

That was in California, so I don't know what "fall" means, in context.
If I recall correctly, it was package bees on foundation, with syrup and pollen sub. In that circumstance they made brood. No natural pollen available. I suppose the bees were Italians. So they pretty much brood continuously...

 

[A Novice]

This topic shows the reason why beekeepers often say; "All Beekeeping is local"

Bees store food (honey and pollen) for one reason. That reason being, so that soon after the winter solstice the queen can begin laying without bees venturing out to find resources that are not yet available. I have no doubt that despite below freezing temps and 2' of snow, my bees have already begun laying up small patches of brood. We won't see natural pollen from Maples or Willows until late March, early April. Although, if it warms up enough for bees to fly, we will also open feed dry pollen sub, but only in the Spring, never in the Fall.

'Different strokes for different 'locals'

We should expect that In the North it's a slow start, and in the South one can assume it'll be faster, likely by the time natural pollen presents.....any day now for some folks .

In other words, if the bees (and beekeepers) prepared their hives with ample stores of honey and pollen in the Fall, they 'should' be OK, regardless of where they are living.

This isn't meant as a slam, but as much as I enjoy Randy Olivers well researched offerings, he and his bees live in California, where keeping bees is considerably different than Northern Wisconsin.

AGREED. The point was only addressing the idea that bees won't start brooding without natural pollen.

No need to feed pollen in SE Wisconsin.

 

[A Novice]

This hasn't been my experience as it relates to making Maple Syrup. I've hauled sap on some warm days in Northern Michigan before the trees weren't even in bloom yet. I think the general statement tends to come from people observing Silver Maples which tend to go earlier (I've seen them as early as late February/early March). Reds to me are pretty normal and outside of bad luck bees and syrup makers should be able to work them. Sugars are late enough that it would take really bad luck for the bees not to work them.

edit for typo

In Southeast Wisconsin the bees are able to work the nectar and pollen from the maple trees. In fact if the weather is right you will get some maple honey though it is pretty rare for it to be enough so that it ends up in the supers. It is the Blandest honey that you can imagine, sort of like maple syrup but not as strongly flavored.
I had some that the bees put up in the feeding shim last spring and I thought it would be quite a treat but it was rather disappointing. Just a couple of pieces of burr comb full of honey and they capped it even.

 

[A Novice]

I concur with A. Novice on the potential for a Red Map[le surpus in S. E.wisconsin. We saw white wax the middle of March in 2012??? when we had several days in the 70's.

A prudent northern bees does not brood until Dandelions, and then goes like H E. double hockey sticks.

Uber? - that's the operative word in a German's theme song "Deutschland Uber Alles".

Crazy Roland

Uber is also a slang term meaning superior.

It was quite popular in leetspeak, which can also be written as 13375p3ak. A form of communication and a subculture popular among computer geeks back in the day.
The idea was to write in a way that other 1337 ppl underst00d, but which would get by text based filters or sensors.
Uber = !_!b3r, as an example.