Sugar dust = cheeper bee food

Greg Peck · June 14, 2008, 01:31:44 AM

I approached a candy/syrup manufacture to see about buying some sugar from them at better pricing then in the store. What I found was that they sell "sweepings", basically the sugar that got onto the floor while transferring it from a rail car into the silos. This sugar is sold as animal quality. I then found that they sell their sugar dust which is the sugar that is collected in their sugar dust collector. It is a very fine powder which dissolves very quickly in warm water. It is not powdered sugar although that is what it looks like. Both of these sugars, sweepings and dust is sold at half the price of regular store bought sugar, about 20 cents a pound. So I write this post to let everyone know that you can check with local large scale food manufactures and you might be able to find a good deal like I did. I got 200 pounds of sugar for 39.00 and the best part is that it dissolves very very quickly.

Here are some pics.

Click to enlarge!

Click to enlarge!
The glass on the left is the sugar dust in water. The one on the right is powdered sugar in water. I guess the starch in powdered sugar makes the water cloudy.

Click to enlarge!

madscientist · June 14, 2008, 02:20:04 AM

Candy/syrup manufacturer near Harrisburg PA. Wonder who that could be ;)

Too bad they don't have a plant near Dallas.

Good find though.

JoelinGA · June 14, 2008, 02:52:47 AM

Wow! Very good find there!! :shock:

eri · June 14, 2008, 09:20:21 AM

Did you make the checkered board? Looks like maple and walnut. Lovely.

JP · June 14, 2008, 10:22:36 AM

Being a movie star, you have got some great connections there! ;)

...JP

Greg Peck · June 14, 2008, 11:40:33 AM

Eri- I did make the checker board table. You can see more of it on my wood working site http://www.secondfast.com/gregsworkshop/gregsworkshop/checkertable.html

JP- you are right it does not hurt to be famous to get the good deals :) I get questions about it everyday so I figured I would put up a different pic of my dad on my profile. Just joking I am no relation to the famous Gregory Peck. Gregory Peck was not his real name anyway.

madscientist- surprisingly enough I did not check with Hershey about this endeavor. I had dealt with them in the past and found them very hard to deal with. They will not help you unless you can tell them the name and extension of the person you need to talk to. But they give you no way to find out who that person is so it is a pain. I guess I can understand being that they are so huge, if they tried to track down people for every small time guy who gives them a call they would not get anything done.

SignQueen · June 14, 2008, 03:36:56 PM

I am a Fedex Courier, recently I was talking to one of my "pickups" about being a beekeeper. They ship sugar and corn syrup, turns out once a month they toss out the 1lb samples from each rail car. Instead, now they are saving it for me. yay. I now have 35lbs of sugar and 30lbs of food grade corn syrup, what a hookup and it doesn't cost a cent!

eri · June 14, 2008, 06:28:10 PM

Greg, I'm guessing if you're as meticulous a beekeeper as you are a woodworker, your bees must be magnificent! Nice work.

Greg Peck · June 16, 2008, 06:29:49 PM

Thanks Eri. I love woodworking and beekeeping. The reason my wife has so many wooden things is because I will not sell or give away anything that is not up to my standards, so she gets them. My wife always says "no one will ever notice it is messed up a little" But I know and it bugs me. Any how thanks for the kind words.

BeeHopper · June 16, 2008, 07:31:53 PM

I know someone that would like to buy a few pounds of that sugar. What's your price ?

:-D

Greg Peck · June 16, 2008, 10:41:42 PM

I think 1.00 a pound sounds good to me. :) No really if you want some pm me and we will work something out. I think the company would ship a drum for pretty cheep. I will have to see if you want that much.

jimmy · June 17, 2008, 01:09:39 AM

Thanks for the idea. I have a candy factory about 50 miles away. While he said he had very little waste of sugar he offered me a product called " CANTAB"
I breezed it by as I didn't know anything about it. After doing a short search on the net I found it to be a man-made artificial sweetener.
Has anyone heard or done any extensive research on this for bee food grade?
He also said he uses corn syrup primarily for sweetener,with the cost for that fairly close to what I would pay in the store.

Brian D. Bray · June 17, 2008, 05:51:26 PM

QuoteJP- you are right it does not hurt to be famous to get the good deals I get questions about it everyday so I figured I would put up a different pic of my dad on my profile. Just joking I am no relation to the famous Gregory Peck. Gregory Peck was not his real name anyway.

With a given name like Archibald Cox it is not too hard to imagine why an actor would prefer a psuedonym or non de plume like Gregory Peck.