>Well, it’s easy to find VHP sugar here (Brazil is a big sugarcane producer). Beekeepers prefer it over the white granulated one… and bees agree with that: VHP sugar won’t last much in a feeder. 


Interesting to hear your observation that Brazilan bees can distinguish between the sucrose content of granulated sugars. It makes sense that they could because of the feeder studies that Seeley and others have done on different concentrations of liquid sugar solutions - bees prefer the higher sucrose levels. But I have not seen any studies on granulated sugars and have always wondered why bees will sometimes clean granulated sugar from the colony like it's a foreign substance. It brings up the question of when will bees reject granulated sugar and when will they accept it specifically in non-starvation situations like in feeders on a rainy day during honey production.  

Somehow I think it may be related to this South African study where they demonstrated that bees prefer warm thin nectars over viscous cold ones. It may be that the high metabolic cost of ingesting sugars grains versus the benefits of ingesting nectar weighs in on their foraging choices and they move to nectar whenever they can. The bees in this study were Scuts. 


>"Marked honeybees avoided higher nectar viscosities with successive feeder visits. Bees thus showed
strong preferences for both warmer and less viscous nectar, independent of
changes in its sugar concentration. Bees may benefit from foraging on nectars
that are warmer than air temperature for two reasons that are not mutually
exclusive: reduced thermoregulatory costs and faster ingestion times due to
the lower viscosity." 

>Honeybees prefer warmer nectar and less viscous nectar, regardless of
sugar concentration
Susan W. Nicolson, Leo de Veer, Angela Ko¨hler† and Christian W. W. Pirk

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2013.1597


Bill Hesbach
Cheshire CT

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