"Maximum protein consumption is by young nurse bees (65 mg per bee over ten days) to meet the physiological demands of brood food production."
A bee weighs more or less 125 mg as pointed out by another poster.  The quoted sentence is ambiguous to me.  Does it mean 65 mg a day or 65 mg total over ten days?  It does not make sense that a young bee would eat half its body weight a day so the sentence must mean 65 mg total over 10 days.

So, 65 mg pollen consumption  times 1500 new bees a day times a total of 240 days raising brood at that rate equals 23.4 million mg per year.  Divide 23.4 million mg by 1.0 million to get 23.4 Kg of pollen a year.  Now double this number as the adults must eat some pollen and you get a bit under 50 kg a year versus the 142 kg a year in the article the above quote came from.
Conclusion:  I really do not know how many Kg of pollen a hive needs over a year.  But, I am way over generous when I threw in the queen laying 1500 eggs every day for eight months in the above calculation.  I can only conclude the article is wildly internally inconsistent.  Also, 300 pounds of pollen a year for one hive seems way too high unless it is pollen with only tiny levels of protein.  I would sure think a Kg of 50% protein pollen would feed a lot more bees than a Kg of 5% protein pollen.  Perhaps part of the confusion is there is no one figure that covers all of us?  Maybe beekeeping is local and depends on local conditions?
Dick

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