Hi Andy and All:  You wrote:
 
>... One lesson all learn is that bees have nasty
>habits of eating back on brood if the food intake falls below a certain
>level, ...
 
But you also wrote that "bees consume only liquids".
 
Now I actually did not find that very contradictory, because brood is
probably more liquidy than pollen.  I can imagine the bees breaking up the
outer cuticle of the larva and sucking up the juice much as a spider.  (Do
they haul out the larval shell afterwards?  I can imagine that it might be
less work than breaking it up into drinkable size pieces.)
 
Anyway, Andy, I was pretty intrigued by the idea of bees DRINKING their
beebread and it has some practical application in how firm one mixes his/her
pollen substitute/extender.  So I went to the anatomy section of Hive and
Honeybee today and went over mouthparts and feeding.  It never actually says
that bees ONLY use their proboscis for feeding.  It is in fact anatomicly
possible for the bees to put something in their mouth without it going
through the proboscis (using the mandibles).
 
On the other hand, the proboscis is a perfect "sludge" pump for pumping very
thick viscous stuff.  It has a hairy tongue pumping up and down inside it to
keep stuff moving and unclogged, and if it does clog, it disassembles very
easily <big grin>.
 
So, I am not really doubting you Andy, but I am wondering  how sure you are
that bees ONLY drink.  You might even pull our legs sometimes <bigger grin>.
 
Stan