Robo, I think that your comments are well worth listening to. Of course sugar is a chemical, in its own right. But....compare check-mite, (comouphous), and the like. It is well known that these particular chemicals can be held in the wax, which is not good. I do not profess to know everything, or not even a millionth close. But, comouphous is bad. That is all I can say, I know that it is.
I do not know what is done to powdered sugar to make it powdered, as far as chemicals goes. But....ever left powdered sugar not in an airtight container. It doesn't stay in that fluffy shape for long.
When I apply powdered sugar to the bees. I process it myself. I use my Bamix to make white sugar turn into powder. I know that we feed white sugar to the bees, in the diluted liquid form, placed on top of the inner cover, made into candy.
I don't think that we can equate powdered sugar to diamateous earth, or maybe one can. But I don't think so. This "earth" is very "strong" in its action and I don't think it would "cut" the bees up. I don't think that powdered sugar even comes close. I have to sit on the fence with these thoughts, because I am not an expert.
I see nothing wrong with using powdered sugar shakes. In the springtime it will be part of my mite control plan, my mind has been made up. It has been said that it is a very mild treatment, yes, it can cause harm to larvae (eggs?), but it certainly knocks down the mite population, and high mite populations are far more detrimental to hive health than the loss of some baby bees in the making. I thought once that the death of larvae (eggs?) would be bad, but upon research into this, I know for surely that it is not the worse of the evils.
I don't know yet if my sugar treatments had any effect on mite control or not. I will know this when I perform the 3 day sticky board test the first week of September. Even then I won't know for surely if it helped or not.
What I should have done was measure the mite counts shortly after the sugar treatment tests, but as things go, plain and simply got too busy with the farm stuff. Oh well. Again, Rob, your comments were interesting, and yes, I think aloud too, it is a wonderful and good thing to do, we must always express what we feel or think. Have a wonderful day, best of life, best of great health. Cindi