Can I feed bees a pollen pattie but keep it outside of the hive?

[Mattamos3050]

Hello
So I want to give a weak hive a pollen pattie.
Can I leave the pattie outside the hive in a covered box with an entrance for them. Will they use it or am I just wasting a pattie? Everything I have seen about outside pollen feeding was using dry pollen. Can a pollen pattie work?

[JurassicApiary]

You're more likely to feed other bugs and pests and make the bees compete for the patty if it's outside the hive, if they even find it.

Typically, you lay pollen patties across top of the frames of the hive you want to supplement.  Make them thin and they should fit under the inner cover without any issues. Leave the wax paper on the patty to prevent it from making a mess in the hive.  The bees will chew through the paper and eat the patty if they desire it.  If you make them in a batch, you can freeze unused patties for use later.

[BeeMaster2]

Matt,
Welcome to Beemaster.
A major problem with pollen paddies in the south, warm climates with no frost line to speak of, is Small Hive Beetles. If you put a whole patty in your hive or under a cover outside of the hive, SHBs will lay their eggs in it. You will breed thousands of SHBs in the patties. One way around this is to only add enough pollen patty to the top of the hive that they can use up in 24 hours. Unless there are no flowers what so ever in your area, they probably will not use it. Where I am there is very few flowers but the bees collect pollen from the seed stems of the Bahia Grass. They will find pollen one way or another.

Jim Altmiller

[Robo]

My bet is the bees would ignore it unless they are really desperate.

[TheHoneyPump]

Hello
So I want to give a weak hive a pollen pattie.
Can I leave the pattie outside the hive in a covered box with an entrance for them. Will they use it or am I just wasting a pattie? Everything I have seen about outside pollen feeding was using dry pollen. Can a pollen pattie work?

The remote box will fill with beetles, ants, and grubs. Not a single bee will go there.
Put the pattie in the hive, on the top of the brood frame bars where the brood is being reared, center of the box, right above the cluster. This mainly stimulates their hygiene impulse to clean and clear the nest of foreign debris. Because the patty is sticky and gooey they cannot just pickup particles and haul away. They pretty much have to eat it to get rid of it.  They are forced to consume the patty and get the benefits of what is in it.

To feed pollen or supplement outside the hive use dry powdered/pulverized.  As per Robo, the bees will ignore it if there is anything else available.  They really only go to it if the surrounding area (3 miles around) is void of flora life and desolate.

[Oldbeavo]

Watching bees collect dry pollen substitute is cool. They roll around in it picking up to cart back.
HP is again correct, if there is the slightest bit of pollen around they will ignore it.
They make pollen patties with sugar syrup and some BK's think the bees eat it for the sugar rather than the pollen, expensive syrup feeding.