Francis Fedrizzi wrote:
> Could you tell us what brand of powdered sugar you use?  Does it contain 
> corn starch?

The regular confectioner's sugar you buy in the store has some small 
percentage of corn starch in it, 2-3% is what I understand. Keeps it 
from lumping/clumping.

I was told by someone who clearly had an opinion but very likely no hard 
  evidence, that the small amount of cornstarch, which is not 
particularly good for bees, caused no problems because a) they weren't 
cooped up in the hive during and after treatments as they might be in 
the winter if it were fed to them as food, and b) that they don't really 
eat much of it anyways when you dump it in the hive- they spend most of 
their efforts grooming it off, which behavior undoubtedly has something 
to do with why the treatment works. Clearly they're going to end up 
consuming some of the powdered sugar but I've never heard of any 
problems resulting from the use of it in this fashion.

As someone else posted, you can get plain old powdered sugar without 
starch. I've never bothered. I did try grinding up some regular table 
sugar finely, in a blender, and while it seemed to work, it was rather 
tedious and I never tried it. I'm not sure how fine is fine and what 
impact the particle size has on the effectiveness of the treatment.

George-

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