>Plenty of work has been done to show that bees can't tell the nutritional content of protein food

Pete, you may be overgeneralizing.  Foragers do not consume pollen, so may
gather organic dusts that have little nutritional benefit.  But they very
clearly prefer some dusts, feedstuffs, or pollens over others 


Right. I was referring to the foragers. What goes on inside the hive is less well known, in terms of what they eat and what they throw out. It's quite possible that foragers bring in sawdust but that nobody eats it. In terms of what attracts them, as I said, it appears to be odor cues. Just as we might be more attracted to hot cinnamon buns over dry cereal, irrespective of their nutritional value. I am not sure even people are that good at making the right nutritional choices; at least not without education. Whether there are educational processes going on in eusocial colonies is a topic for a grad student to explore!

P

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