On 1 Nov 99, at 20:20, JamesCBach wrote:

> David Eyre mentions bees storing pollen above a brood nest and queen
> excluders.
>
> I have noted this on numerous occasions with poor queens whose bees
> exhibit what I've called aberrant behaviors in previous posts.  My
> observations suggest that they only do this when there is a lack of a
> queen retinue and thus a lack of queen  pheromones.

This was certainly not the case!  What I found was by accident and
certainly not frames of pollen, and I will add after 50 years of
keeping bees I have never seen what James describes.
         Looking for light honey by shining a bright light through the back
of capped honey, I noticed a small number of dark cells. Curious, I
uncapped some to find pollen in a variety of colours, leading me to
think this was stored over a period of time.
        This year we used queen excluders on our honey hives and during our
annual search for light honey couldn't find any pollen at all.
        So should I 'conclude' from this 'observation' that top entrances
and the lack of queen excluders lead to pollen in the honey supers? I
certainly believe so!


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