Excellent questions Dick.

>
> >Has anyone ever looked at commercial dry pollen subs and estimated
> particle size?  The stuff seems fairly fine to me as currently supplied.
>

You bet!  A major cost of producing subs is the grinding involved in
getting down to tiny particle size.  Both Megabee and Mann Lake struggled
with this, and went to considerable extent to upgrade the machinery.

>
> >Also has anyone ever tried feeding pollen sub by dusting the dry powder
> into drawn combs, perhaps followed by a spray of HFCS or sugar syrups to
> wet it out?
>

Easy to do the above with collected frozen pollen pellets.  Haven't tried
with sub, as there would likely be issues with bacterial, yeast, and other
fungus growth.>

>
> If bees gather dry pollen sub outside the hive and carry it home like they
> would pollen do they store it?


Yes indeed!  I am currently collaborating with the Anderson lab to answer
my question as to whether such fermented sub then retains its nutritional
qualities.  The first round of tests suggests that perhaps not completely.
I'm hoping to start a cage replicate this week.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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