Glut of pollen frames - how best to store and use?

[deejaycee]

Hi folks

Things are cooking along here in New Zealand heading into later summer, and the dozen hives we have out on an organic cropping farm are going gangbusters.

One thing they have pretty much all done is gather a ridiculous amount of pollen (I suspect off the bumper pumpkin crop out there), and the brood nests are pretty well clogged up, driving some of the queens up beyond the three 3/4 boxes I prefer them to stay in for the brood nest.

I'll be going out this week to tidy them up, and I'd like to remove a good amount of the pollen and checkerboard in some frames we've just had extracted and cleaned up by our town hives to create a bit more room in the nests.

Question - what then to do with probably about 50+ frames of pollen?  I don't have room to store these in the frames in the freezer.

Can I break the pollen and wax (and no doubt some honey) and freeze to feed back to them in spring? - I have freezer space, just not the right shape for frames  Make sort of a pollen patty?  It would have the wax in it of course - presumably they'd eat around it like they do with cleaning up crush and strain wax?

[Cindi]

deejaycee.  Now isn't that just interesting, I guess if there is pollen the bees will gather it in excess of what they require.  Oh well, that is indeed good.  You are wise to remove these excess pollen frames, they obviously don't need them and far better need room for bees and nectar.

I am anxious to hear of answers to your questions.....that was a very great thread to start and it will be interesting.

I can understand what you are saying about the room for storing frames.  I honestly don't see why you could not scrape off the frames and store the pollen/wax/etc. in baggies in the freezer.  Why not?  I don't see any reason for the "why not".  Maybe you will get answers that would change yours and my mind, that is why I am anxiously awaiting answers too.....have a wonderful and beautiful day, love life. Cindi

[suprstakr]

How about trying polen traps . Moove the traps from hive to hive and you'll have polen to freeze in jars for next spring . In the mean time the bees will eliminate the overstock feeding new brood .  ;)

[BMAC]

why not just give them an extra brood box on top and split all frames of honey and pollen between all the brood boxes.  Just think in the spring how many more splits you will be able to make....

[deejaycee]

Thanks for the replies folks.  I think I'll go a bit both ways - Will freeze maybe half a dozen frames worth to experiment with next spring, and the rearrange the rest - maybe store a couple of boxes of pollen on top of a hive above everything else.  Thinking.. that wouldn't lure the queen up into teh top of the hive though would it?

Suprstakr - pollen traps are definitely on the buy list for next season :) I think there's reasonable prices available for pollen too.. could be a bonus.


BMAC - funny you should mention splits.  We're seriously considering doing some autumn splits at the moment.  I'm a bit nervous about it though, so I'll put together a post tonight with some questions .. mostly nervous about how late we can do them and so on.  We have very mild weather here - never snows, only light frosts in winter, and the nucs would be in town until the queens were well settled, so they're on a continous flow....

questions are just neverending right now.

[tig]

i'm not sure how your weather is like there but recently ours has been so weird.  february is ending and we should be into summer but it hasn't stopped raining and being cold.  3 weeks ago when i inspected my colonies they had a lot of pollen.  each double box has at least 3 pollen frames and pollen scattered in the other frames.  when i opened them last week i was shocked to see almost zero pollen!  im some boxes the queen had stopped laying.

i rushed home to grab some stored frozen pollen and did an emergency pollen feed.  i checked them 2 days later to see if they needed another pollen feed and to my relief i saw they had some pollen in the frames and the queens were laying once again with a lot of bees coming back with pollen.  by then the weather had cleared a bit.  not nice and sunny, but sunny enough with occasional showers.  i gave them a second feed to be on the safe side since they hadn't filled up a full frame and im glad i did because it rained for another 3 days after.

with the weather gone bonkers, its now hard to tell when a colony has a lot of surplus.  i did think i had a surplus because there barely was any place for the queens to lay.  i was even considering trapping again and now im glad i didn't.

remove the surplus frames by all means, but if you can trap some and keep it in the freezer for emergencies, that would be even better!