Pollen traps and trapping

[Vance G]

I have been out of bee keeping for many many years but I once thought the way to fortune was pollen traps and I really knocked my honey crop into the dumpster one year by running a hundred of them. I collected a lot of pollen. With the bottom traps I was using. Those traps also collecting every bee wing and antennae that fell to the bottom of the hive. I ran the pollen thru a seed cleaner from an old grain elevator, but it still required a lot of hand cleaning to get it clean enough to sell. Question one. Do the new traps turn out a cleaner product thats not so impossibly time consuming to clean? I wish I had just a few pound of the hundreds I produced that I ended up feeding to my brotheinlasws sheep bwecase I couldn't sell it! Next question is would people want to buy it for supplimental feeding in the spring with the lips, wings and eybrows still in the pollen. Any thoughts??

[Michael Bush]

>Do the new traps turn out a cleaner product thats not so impossibly time consuming to clean?

Any of the Sundance traps are cleaner than most.  The Sundance II is a top trap and is significantly cleaner than even the Sundance bottom trap (which is pretty clean).

[Vance G]

Thanks.  Where can one purchase this most reasonably?

[Michael Bush]

I've seen them serveral places, but Dadant stands out in my mind, mostly because they have them in eight frame (at least last I looked).