Throughout the summer I use granulated sugar finely ground in a coffee  
grinder for dusting bees. Previous to this I used commercially  
prepared icing sugar.  I stopped this having heard that icing sugar  
contained the anti-caking agent E341 - rumours reaching me that this  
was harmful to bees, though no scientific evidence was given to back  
this up. Whilst it's  a bit fiddly using the small coffee grinder, the  
granulated sugar is much cheaper than icing sugar. However, I am still  
interested to know whether E341 is hazardous to bees - I would have  
thought not as icing sugar and various forms of bakers' fondant  -   
have been used for many years in queen cages, small mating nucs and  
for emergency winter feeding.
John Phipps
Greece 

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