Pretty good buddy, im so interested to start a bee keeping here in the Philippines, i've learn a lot of tips from your videos. This July 2018 im planning to buy a NUCS of italian bees for my starter. Thanks for sharing your knowledge in bee keeping bro.
Ive just purchased my first hive but I wont be ordering bees until i find the perfect spot on my new property, and even then, will have to wait until early next year to actually get the bees. Really enjoying these videos.
Great Video work....I do feel some concern for the worker bees getting ripped off....even if you think it’s no big deal to shave off some pollen....these little girls live such a short period and work so hard to sustain the hive....if only people were half as dedicated....
We know that we should have 30 to 40 pounds of honey to feed going into the winter , how much pollen can you take without hurting the bees? ...... Love you videos great job, you are helping many.
It seems throughout the summer months the bees are still able to store an adequate amount of pollen inside the hives. The traps don't seem to be limiting colony growth at all. I imagine all that's happening is the bees are spending a bit more effort to increase their pollen foraging numbers to make up for the trapped pollen. This means it could negatively affect honey production, although I don't see a lot of that, and any trade-off seems to be worth it. When september comes I generally stop trapping pollen. This gives the bees a good month or 6 weeks to make sure the winter bees are well developed and fed. It might not even be necessary, but so far I haven't risked trapping later in the fall.
So there’s this dying bee I’m looking after right now. I didn’t have any honey so I just fed it some sugar water and pure white sugar. It’s licking it all up and hopefully it will be happy and peaceful when it dies instead of out in the cold where I found it. Is sugar good for them? Idk but beeford likes it so I’m just gunna give him a bit more Edit: holy shit I can’t remember writing this comment, by morning the bee was completely fine and it was healthy and flying around my room before crawling onto my hand and staying there. I let him/her go somepoint then, they wouldn’t have survived the night if I didn’t help it because of the storm, I let him free and he buzzed away, I felt like a proud mother 😂😂😂
Psycho Edits ...yes bees love sugar, bee keepers feed their bees a sugar syrup made up of half sugar and half water then dissolve the sugar in the water warm or a bit hot so it dissolves , let it cool then feed it to the bees. Be careful tho if you feed out in the open you will get more bees, lots of bees wanting that sugar syrup , I open feed in times of no nectar and pollen periods to help bee colonies.
Devan, don’t know if you answer posts but I will put this one out there as I can’t find the answer anywhere. When one has a combed frame for reuse, and it has pollen in it, do the bees use that old pollen?
Hey, sorry, I actually don't process any pollen for sale. I sell in bulk through a broker. Once I take it from the hive i just store it in the freezer until I'm ready to sell a load of it.
I found a bee i think and its hurt and i wanna Take care until its able to fly again and stand ans i am a Lil Kid so i Font actually know what they war or Drink...amma Feed it FOR the week..right now i was looking at its so cute awww...gut hier 🙁😞
That is a lot of pollen. Do they have enough for what they need? Could you explain how much you take. How long you have that trap on there for? How often you do it. Thanks
So what do yo do with the pollen that you collect? Also in one of your videos you talked about a hive that was making a queen cell, I think you talked about taking the queen cell, waited for you to tell what you did with it.
YES they do. I spilled 4 gallons in the back of my truck. Yes they eat honey, if you don't believe me, ask all of my neighbors who were freaking out (the honey ran down the curb gutter. There were hundreds of thousands of bees (way more than I own in my hives).
I sell in bulk through a broker. I don't have any equipment for sorting, cleaning, or dying pollen for human consumption. Most of the pollen I collect (as I am lead to understand) ends up being sold to the bumblebee industry. Bumblebee colonies are raised commercially and some companies use honeybee collected pollen as part of their food source, fed in the hives to help them start growing. Here in Ontario, the bumblebee industry is a bit secretive, but it's there and it's not going away. Bumblebees are used extensively in greenhouses to pollinate tomatoes and peppers, and lots of other crops. In outdoor settings blueberry growers purchase bumblebee colonies. I've also seen the at pumpkin farms, cranberry farms, and apple orchards. Most people don't realize how large the commercial bumblebee industry is, they don't get a lot of press.
I suppose they go to ant and bug heaven. But seriously, if pollen is going to be packaged and sold for human consumption (which this pollen isn't) there should be at least a few levels of mechanical sifting and sorting. Just like grain going into the harvester before it's turned into flour. It has to be cleaned and prepared, there's no real difference. The pollen in this video goes directly into my freezer and then is sold to a broker who handles all the nitty gritty.
You typically only take pollen from hives a couple of days a week. That way they still store plenty for winter and daily use. It sounds like Devan may re-feeding the pollen back to his bees.
Just subscribed and love your videos! Can you say more about how long you leave the traps on for and how often you collect. We are in Waterloo so have e same weather as you. And the same pollen traps!!!
Glad to hear from some Ontario viewers. I leave my pollen traps on from May to September. Unless there's a queen issue I leave them trapping pollen the entire time. If I find that there's an issue where a new queen needs to get mated from the hive then I switch the entrance so they don't have to go through the pollen trap. A couple years ago i did a bit of an experiment with that and found very low success with queen mating through the pollen trap, as you might guess. Late May and Early June the pollen is coming in fast and I often find full drawers of pollen in 4 days from strong hives. Later on in July and August they typically don't fill a drawer any faster than 1 week. But it's all very dependent on the strength of the colony. Even more exaggerated than honey production.
Devan Rawn yep, took our first course with Paul at U of G and have taken further courses with TTP. So grateful to live so close to them all. Do you have an email as I have a further question for you. Mine is bhc.catherine@gmail.com
Devan Rawn nectar is the sweet aromatic liquid, the bees drink and turn into honey in their social stomachs to be eaten and stored for their pupae and workers, then wax over. Pollen is like mud it gets everywhere, and gives colour to the wax, and potentially honey. The stored nectar is used to make wax.
Chad Temperton Wow! Good thing you're here to straighten out the career beekeeper on what really goes on with the bees! Please post the link to your video series on this topic so that we can all gain from your wisdom and insight!
Bees eat pollen. It’s their protein, they make bee bread with it and it spurs on an increase in brood. Also thanks Devon your videos are great. I would like to know how you made the pollen capture system you have in this video.
@@brentmorgan7427 I guess it's a OAC Pollen Trap. You can find a rough plans of it, in BC Langstroth beehive construction plans PDF. Just Google it (one copy is at OBA website as "construction.pdf").
