Non-sweet sugar

[jgd]

Last fall I purchased 2-25lb. bags of the store brand of sugar. When I fed the bees they didn't seem to be much interested so I assumed they had all they needed and I placed the remaining sugar in cans to keep it safe.
When my wife needed some sugar for a batch of cookies she took it from one of these cans, and the cookies were terrible. Not at all sweet and tasty. When she told me where the sugar came from I took a tast of the "sugar" and found it not to be sweet at all. Now I'm worried about my bees. Has anyone run into this before? and what did I feed to my bees?

jd

[power napper]

Now lets see---white powdery substance, does not taste sweet--all kinds of possibilities there!

[Michael Bush]

If it's kind of tasteless, I'd guess it's got too much starch in it. Or it's straight flower. Is it powder or granulated?

[jgd]

It looks and feels like sugar, it did seemed somewhat darker when I was making syrup, Just a tinge of amber as it dissolved. But it is not sweet. If I still had the bag I would take it back to the store. It should be pure granulated sugar.

[Jim Fischer]

Store brand sugar that does not say "Pure Cane
Sugar" on the package is absolutely certain to
be beet sugar rather than cane sugar.

It very well could be that this was improperly
prepared beet sugar, but I have no idea how
the "sugar" could crystallize, and not be
fairly pure sucrose. Can you find a microscope,
and compare the crystals to table sugar crystals
in terms of shape and size?

The Canadians did a whole series of long-term
tests, and for overwintering and early-spring
feeding beet sugar and cane sugar performed
equally well. There are a lot of weird things
that can happen if you use beet sugar in a
frosting or candy-making application, so I've
stayed away from using beet sugar in the
kitchen.