Maybe the government could be encouraged to develop a sugar feed for
beekeepers program as a way of helping support the beekeeping industry?
   The following-described relationship between the govt. and the sugar
industry is similar to the way the honey loan program worked, correct?

Gov't Gets Tons of Forfeited Sugar

WASHINGTON — Care for some sugar? The government has plenty on hand now that
processors have turned over nearly a million tons rather than try to sell it
themselves at a loss.
The sugar was held as collateral under federal price-support loans.
Processors are allowed to forfeit the sugar rather than repay the loans when
domestic prices fall below the loans' value, as they have this year.
The Agriculture Department said Wednesday that more than 804,000 tons, worth
$321 million, were forfeited to the government this week. Another 155,000
tons were surrendered earlier.
Since the early 1980s, USDA has avoided forfeitures by keeping imports low
enough to stabilize domestic prices, but prices have been driven down this
year because of big increases in U.S. production and other factors.
Some of the government's sugar, about 290,000 tons, will be given to farmers
who have pledged to destroy an equivalent amount of this year's crop in a
program to reduce the surplus. The department hasn't decided what to do with
the rest, said spokeswoman Mary Beth Schultheis.
The department purchased 141,000 tons of sugar this spring in a futile effort
to prop up prices and avoid the forfeitures. That sugar, plus the forfeited
amount, brings the government's total stock to 1.1 million tons.
Storing the sugar will cost taxpayers more than $2 million a month. But the
government could recover the cost of the sugar by waiting for prices to rise
and then selling it, said Jack Roney, chief economist for the American Sugar
Alliance.
"It would enable USDA to not only dispose of the sugar, but also enable them
to make a profit on the entire transaction," he said.