Sugar from GMO beets is bad, but so is maple syrup: the bees cannot digest the solids. When I feed at all, it is always C&H.

Hi, Blaine, I googled “where is it illegal to feed honey bees outside?”, and I did not find any *American* State where it is. I found a lot of .au sites, more specifically the District of Victoria, Australia, talking about the original order as well as its many amendments. So I was looking, because I have never heard of such a law in WI.
Where did you see that in the US? I know it is not illegal in WI, where I live. Could you provide us with a list of the States where it is illegal?
To avoid the frenzy that might spark robbing, I place as many feeding stations as possible, about 50-100′ from the hive: When they all congregate around 5 pin holes, they can get a little wild. In the spring, especially, varroas are at the low ebb of their cycle, so you will not infect with varroas at the feeders. I worry more about feeding in the fall: yellow jackets then follow our bees to their hives and will kill the hives to get at the protein in the form of the young brood.
As you know, varroas are ubiquitous in nature. Our bees go foraging and come back infected all the time. Trying to prove that they caught varroa around a feeding pail outside versus in the fields as they have always done would be impossible to prove, me think. If it is the closeness to a sick individual that bothers you, think of the conditions in the hive.
As far as practices that can cause contagion, here are many more offensive things that go on besides feeding them outside:
– Many beekeepers feed their wet frames back, but when you have many, it is hard to remember whose frames are whose, so they do it *approximately*. (they don’t all get their own.)
-Equalizing hives in the Fall: you take from Paul & give to Peter so they all start winter with a healthy amount of stores.
– Look at the reusing of deadouts in which the bees may have crapped inside their hives. You know that they had at least dysentery is not outright nosema.
– Inside feeders that bring in extra moisture and mold may also cause infection.
-Fall feeding in which the bees die in the syrup, and then comes a bad spell of weather and you can’t remove the dead bees. The healthy bees have to feed right next to the molding corpses of their sisters.
-Folks who want to start “on the cheap” and they have a friend of a friend who is getting out of the business and has all that nice equipment, right?
-Splitting hives: you take frames of brood that you hope are healthy and start a new hive: If that brood was infected with varroa, there you go.
Perhaps it is because I’m a woman, I think of a hive as a womb: In feeding them outside, you give them clean syrup, it does not go in the hives. That is a lot more sanitary than all the other doubtful manipulations beekeepers do to their hives, IMHO.