> The question is this. What is the typical pollen count in honey found in new comb and secondarily is this a feature or a bug?
This will vary, but it is not insignificant, and it is a "feature", rather than a "bug", as one must use "ultra-filtration" to remove all pollen.
See https://www.beeculture.com/why-honey-pollen-is-difficult-to-interpret/
https://tinyurl.com/4uteea2n
If it were a "bug", there would be honey that naturally contained zero pollen, and palynologists would be unable to reliably identify any/all honey samples "based upon the pollen" within the honey.
See https://liberalarts.tamu.edu/blog/2017/11/28/the-buzz-on-pollen/
https://tinyurl.com/4ut2fs8m
> Is that pollen, if any, a purposeful addition or an accidental contaminate?
Let's not confuse the issue of how the pollen gets in the honey with the question of its utility or value.
Clearly, nectaries produce only nectar. The pollen gets into the honey after the forager transfers it to a house bee. But we do know that pollen is collected by foragers who show a high level of "fidelity" to a specific blossom type, so any one pellet of foraged pollen is very likely to be from a single floral source. This is very different from what is found in pollen - what one sees is individual grains of pollen, and a wide variety of different shapes and sizes, indicating to even the casual observer that the pollen is not added foraged pollen, simply due to the variety.
But, the addition, even if inadvertent, is inevitable, as we know that this variety of different pollen grains is ubiquitous in honey. This is very similar to the sourdough yeast issue - one need not wave a net around to "collect" wild yeasts for sourdough, one can simply make a starter, and be reasonably assured that sufficient yeasts will be in the flour and/or in the air of the kitchen.
Does this pollen inevitably mixed into nectar and honey as a result of the bee's handling of nectar/honey provide any benefit? This is the harder question, and it really only matters to a colony that has exhausted its pollen stores, but has some stored honey. Even an overwintered colony in spring has some old pollen left over from the prior season, and despite the poor quality of this degraded pollen, colonies are able to raise a limited amount of brood under a wide range of pollen deficits, as no colony has ever died out in spring due solely to a lack of new brood alone.
So, feed an observation hive nothing but sugar water, and deprive it of all pollen, and it will die out. But more than that is both hard to ascertain, and a purely theoretical academic question. A practical beehive in reality would never be subjected to "nectar but no pollen".
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