Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: Fritz on August 24, 2016, 08:20:48 PM

Title: Loosing Pollen
Post by: Fritz on August 24, 2016, 08:20:48 PM
I have screened bottom boards, with beetle trap pans under them. I have not noticed many beetles in the oil pans, but there are a lot of pollen balls. Would the screen bottoms cause me to be loosing a significant amount of pollen? Thanks
Title: Re: Loosing Pollen
Post by: BeeMaster2 on August 24, 2016, 11:13:55 PM
Yes they do. All of my hives have SBB. Some hives drop more pollen than others. Sometimes hives stop dropping pollen, like they learned how not to drop the pollen. Like when you use a pollen extractor, the bees just work harder to get enough pollen.
Jim
Title: Re: Loosing Pollen
Post by: AR Beekeeper on August 24, 2016, 11:33:46 PM
The screened bottoms don't cause the bees to drop the pollen, they just show what the bees have dropped.  On a solid bottom the bees ignore the dropped pollen and the housecleaners carry it out as though it was trash.
Title: Re: Loosing Pollen
Post by: sc-bee on August 25, 2016, 01:34:00 AM
Quote from: AR Beekeeper on August 24, 2016, 11:33:46 PM
The screened bottoms don't cause the bees to drop the pollen, they just show what the bees have dropped.  On a solid bottom the bees ignore the dropped pollen and the housecleaners carry it out as though it was trash.

So a pollen trap is made of screen wire and as bee cross over/ through it some pollen is remove. So why do you not think a screen bottom... that beees crawl across would not encourage some sort of pollen drop?