No Pollen To Speak Of

[mtnb]

Hi. I inspected today and found barely any pollen at all. None at all in the bottom deep brood box where the frames are packed with capped larvae and lots of honey. The next medium box up I nadired in last Wednesday and they've already started building comb and one frame already even had a little patch of brood in it. Those frames did also have a little bit of pollen. The third box up is the one with the honeyband. There's fresh larvae and capped brood but again, didn't notice much pollen at all. Besides that, they have about 5 packed frames of honey in the super above and then another 2 1/2 frames above that. They are working on building comb in those two boxes also. I'm concerned they don't have enough pollen. Those frames in the bottom deep were just as packed with capped brood last week as this one. How long exactly does it take for bees to emerge once the larvae has been capped? My bee population is going to explode here any time, I would imagine. I guess that will also open up that bottom box again for the Queen to lay in? A few weeks ago, Rick from Western Bee was driving through to Billings and was nice enough to deliver, free of shipping charges, anything we needed from the store and I had decided I should have some MegaBee on hand for the spring. Is this something I could feed them now?

I guess the reason there is no bee bread in those bottom deep frames is because they fed that to the larvae before the cells got capped? So does it really not matter that they don't have any pollen down there?

[iddee]

Worker development...3,6,12.  3 days egg, 6 days larva,12 days capped.

I can't help you much with pollen sub, but they do need protein...

[mtnb]

Ok. Thanks for that. So that means they should all emerge soon.