Pollen patties are insurance. the books will tell you there is very little risk of dearth but... who knows if it will rain or not. When I was commercial I used Spanish pollen which was irridated for disease.
So lets play what if... If the spring is rubbish.. raining all the time... cold and windy.. one needs to boost morale. And frankly morale is grossly over looked. Happy bees get on, miserable bees do NOT.
so.. thin syrup, a pound a pint, and pollen patties.. and woo hoo off they go.
PH
This is very true,, but I'm still unconvinced that a scoop of foreign gloop plonked on top of their nest is necessarily a boost.Originally Posted by Poly Hive
I'm of the view that the less I have to feed my bees the better for them and for my wallet (the latter being the bigger of the two concerns!). So adding pollen sub or supplement is not something I want to do. And the point remains why in such a hurry to build them up? Is everyone so focused on OSR? Maybe it's just because we have none here on Speyside I find it slightly odd.
Mine are finding plenty of pollen today. What's this greyish pollen? Probably from some sort of catkin.
When I used the patties I was aiming at OSR and very important it was too. The norm for me was a ton of it and it fairly helped to pay some bills. With that sort of return the feeding as a very good investment.
Down here the Autumn sown OSR barely flowers for three weeks and it is so early, starting third week in March usually I don't put on supers if I can avoid it, and if it gets stroed in the 2nd brood box I bruise it to get the bees to consume it before the supers go on, and my Lime 2014 comb honey is still liquid which frankly is extremely gratifying.
PH
What, no Belfast brogue on that one?! One of the elms (red tufty things rather than proper catkins) has pollen that colour and one of the ornamental prunus is another possibility. They're out now.
Belfast brogue? And there was me thinking I had an accent like Prince Charles.
I noticed both hazel and alder catkins when I was out for a walk today as well. The hazel pollen seems to be very yellow.
Inspired by this thread and a big bag of pollen I have spare I made a pile of patties using "finmans" recipe from the other place.
Smells quite appetising. I have popped them in the freezer for now as I thought it was a bit early for up here. Might stick one on and just see if it gets touched. Do i stick them face down over the frames with the greaseproof paper on the top to stop them drying out ?
Some sort of Japanese maple ? Might not be too early in your sub-tropical climate.
about 8c but nice and sunny.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks