Yes, I did notice something similar with my orange silica beads. The outer perals show saturation while the inner pearly are still pristine. But the spool centre containers are rotated a lot and as long as not packed tightly, expose more pearls.
Certainly not as effective as actual air circulation (respect 
), but helpful nonetheless.
As for getting moisture out of the filament, there are a couple of threads threads that may be of interest to you. Dry air alone will not do it, but they are very interesting. Here’s one of the longer ones:
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