I have been trapping pollen for 3-4 years and am curious about other 
beekeepers experiences

I use the Sundance traps which work well. I am not able to put the trap 
into bypass mode though as drones get caught inside and we end up 
with a stinking mess of dead bees inside the trap. 

Its no surprise that trapping pollen can be hard on a colony so I have 
been moving towards trapping for 6 weeks and then removing the trap 
for the rest of the season since bypass does not seem to work and 
the work of re-installing the trap is well too much work. 

I found if I trap for 3 months or more (live in central Mn) honey 
production drops and several hives end up queenless. Surprisingly 
though the "survivior" hives that have had traps on them for 3 months 
or more appear to winter just as well as hives with no pollen traps. 

My other management dillema is the drying of pollen. The health food 
store pollen sold in the area looks and tastes like sawdust and I 
suspect it originates from China. My customers like my pollen if I 
freeze dry it in paper bags and the resultant pollen has some residual 
moisture in it. Freezing also kills any moth or other larva, ants etc.. 

I'm interested in how to measure the moisture content and what is a 
good benchmark for dryness. 

I have read articles in the Bee Journal etc concerning pollen trapping 
but I never felt I had a good understanding of how pollen trapping 
affects the colonies life cycle and nectar collecting activities.

Any comments concerning pollen trapping would be appreciated. 

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