Couldn’t agree more. A lot of the older books and recieved wisdom is based on times where the availability of natural forage in most areas was immeasurably better over much of the countryside between main crop flows. We now have to resort to feeding during the summer - it is bonkers.
It is a sad reality that in many places natural pickings are now often very thin between substantial planted crop flows. If this combines with poor flying weather, a small colony will do well to simply maintain itself let alone invest in comb building.
All my road verges locally having just come into flower with red campion, chervil and deadnettle etc have today been flailed back to the soil without any gain to road safety whatsoever simply to “look tidy”. It is hardly any surprise we are living through an age of natural invertebrate population collapse and consequently wild song bird declines and everything that goes with them. We are shortly going to live in the tidiest lifeless countryside in this islands history
. It really does my head in!