Hi Peter

>> It does not deprive bees of pollen, the more pollen that you remove, the
>> more bees are diverted to pollen collection rather than nectar gathering
> 
> Maybe, but I never noticed that hives on pollen traps ever stored less
> honey.

It is difficult to say in my case as all of the colonies concerned with 
pollen trapping were not directly producing honey, they were being used 
for all sorts of queen rearing duties and were constantly being mucked 
about, frames of brood being taken out or deposited, being made 
queenless or having strange queens introduced, having drawn combs filled 
by the trapped pollen added, cell finishing frames added, frames robbed 
to make up nucs, bees robbed for swarm boxes or mating nucs and so on. 
They did gather surplus honey, but it was not as much as if the hives 
had not been disturbed. I do not have a handle on the exact amounts, but 
colonies messed about like this only produced a couple of supers of 
honey all season.

I have not used pollen traps on honey production colonies other than for 
quick testing of what crops were being foraged and in some cases using a 
battery driven wheel to sample pollen every fifteen minutes during the 
day, in either of those types of case there was no disruption of honey, 
but the traps were not on for more than a day at a time.


Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net
Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable)

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