I placed pollen patties on a few hives today and I will do the rest tomorrow. They reacted instantly and started to line up around the patty. These are consumed and are not stored, and are converted to brood food.
Questions I have:
1)Does adding a patty reduce foragers focus on foraging for natural pollen?
2)Does it increase focus on nectar (forager re-assignment to nectar from pollen collection)?
3)Does adding pollen patties increase "storage" of natural pollen as they are consuming patties vs bee bread?
(I did a Google Scholar search but nothing much came up)
Note: We have a maximum 2-3 weeks of natural pollen in substantial quantities (Fireweed, main clover blooms in certain locations). I typically get my 1st major frost in early August. We had 2.5C low this morning with a high of 27C. Since my previous pollen bound post, we've had wet cool weather. Yesterday was the 1st warm day in weeks.
I installed one of my pollen collectors tonight for a bit of collecting tomorrow to understand current diversity/availability.
Feeding pollen patties before natural pollen disappears has been part of my winter preparation for the last 3 years. I believe it is more important in my area than spring pollen addition. I have gotten good wintering success (healthy/populous spring bee populations) since I started.
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