Ron & Eefje <[log in to unmask]> wrote:...... one of the bees naturally required food sources is suddenly taken from them and this must have an impact on their well-being. ...... and also depriving the bees the inflow of their pollen may well be their neck shot! Ron van Mierlo Ron, I have a pollen excluder but as of yet have not used it. I'm a little scared to because this is an entirely new area of beekeeping for me. I want to because through my own personal research it seems that pollen extender patties work a lot better when about 1/2 of the patty is made up of natural pollen. Using a pollen trap on a hive. From what I can gather from what I have read, the procedure is to trap pollen for a day or two and then let the bees bypass the trap for a couple of days. You keep alternating the trapping days and the free pass days so that the colony is not seriously deprived from the ingathering of pollen. Now, being as I have not done this to date, I could be seriously wrong in my conclusions stated above. But, we'll see because I do want to trap pollen so as to assist in my endeavor to make splits. Mike in LA --------------------------------- Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************