> found what I thought was white granulated pure cane sugar.
> happened to be at WalMart
I'd be very careful.
I suggest taking the "brown" bags back to Mall-Wart
for an exchange. Make Mall-Wart eat their problem,
rather than your bees.
Here's a few things that may be of help:
Unless the bag clearly says "Pure Cane Sugar", you are certain
to be buying beet sugar. Now, there's nothing wrong with
feeding your bees beet sugar, because, despite what many
may want to believe, the bees can't tell one form of sucrose
from another. Beet sugar should be white also, so the source
of the sugar would not explain the off color.
> the first bag was white the rest were off white
> obviously it wasn't totally refined
That would be very rare, given how the refineries work.
I'd be more inclined to think that it was contaminated with
something after being fully refined. Even "brown sugar" is
almost always fully-refined white sugar that is merely
sprayed with molasses after being fully refined.
This article I did in 2003 may explain more fully:
http://bee-quick.com/reprints/sugar.pdf
> does molasses hurt bees ?
If you are correct, and it is molasses, it will not hurt,
as it is simply an indigestible component of the syrup,
and will pass though the bees undigested. If the bees
can still fly during the time you are feeding fumagilin, and
your only use for this feed is specifically for the application
of feeding fumagilin, then you likely can get away with it.
But we have no idea what the impurity might be, and I
assume that you'd rather not spend a few hundred bucks
on a lab to find out what the impurity might be, so I would
NOT use this sugar for any sort of fall or spring feeding, as
confined bees would be unable to digest the impurities
(whatever they are), and you have no way to assure yourself
that all the feed you feed will be consumed before cold sets in.
Here's my best guesses:
a) Mall-Wart buried its ethics with Sam Walton.
I wouldn't trust that company any further than
I could comfortably spit a rat.
b) Note the 2008 hurricanes, and their tracks through
places like Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica,
and other sugar-cane-producing nations. Note that
in a hurricane, bags of refined sugar could get
soaked with anything, even if stored in a good
warehouse. (Wind shakes building, stacks of pallets
collapse, giant mess results, sugar is sold at salvage
prices to a wheeler-dealer broker, and so on.)
c) The sugar might have been repackaged into new bags after
being sold as "salvage" or scrap to a broker. "Always Low
Prices" means "Always Lowest Quality". Did you think
that someone was selling sugar below cost and hoping to
make money by selling at a loss at higher volume?
d) Despite what you wanted to do with the sugar, it was being
sold for human consumption, so any impurities might be
cause for grave concern on a public health basis.
****************************************************
* General Information About BEE-L is available at: *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/default.htm *
****************************************************
|