pollen and honey bound

[wsgorsuch]

I just went through my # 2 hive from top to bottom and was shocked to find the upper deep almost completely honey bound with no pollen at all and the bottom deep had scattered brood and almost completely pollen bound.I had not made a complete inspection of the bottom deep in about 3 weeks-just tipping to look at bottoms of frames for any swarm cells.I do have another hive that is very strong with 2 deeps and 2 supers.My first thought was to take maybe 4 frames of brood from the strong hive and relocated them to the bound up hive to keep their population going.The honey bound deep frames seem like a piece of cake-would put in #1 or # 10 position back in strong hive-but what to do with the pollen bound ones-just remove and destroy ,or can the bees in the strong hive fix it?

[BjornBee]

Surprised nobody got back to you sooner.

The honey bound frames I would remedy by perhaps opening up the brood chamber and adding any needed supers. I would also Bottom super, meaning placing supers under any existing ones.

As for the pollen bound I would do the following. Take out full frames of pollen and freeze. You can use this fall with any fall feeding or place back in early spring. The pollen bound is much more serious than the honey bound problem. They sometimes will go over board and collect entire boxes full of it.

And you can always take a few frames (process) for honey and open it up that ways also.

I would not however swap frames from hives for this particular problem. Seems like more problems are started in this way.

They will not always "Fix" the problems and beekeeper intervention is needed.

[Michael Bush]

I must have missed when this post showed up. Sorry.

I agree with Bjorn. Open honey (uncapped) the bees will freely move around. They don't move pollen much, so once things are clogged up with pollen they probably won't move it. Frames of pollen are a wonderful asset when starting a split, when trying to feed a hive in the spring, or to put in a hive so there will be pollen in the early spring or for a queen rearing colony so they feed the queen cells well. I'd do what Bjorn says, and save them or use them when starting splits etc.

[wsgorsuch]

Thank you for the input-i will do as you have recommended-makes perfect sense to me.Wow-I sure was surprised at difference in weight in the frames that were completely bound up with pollen and the ones filled with honey.Thanks again for the insight about the pollen-i didn't think that the bees would be able to move pollen around.

[Michael Bush]

They CAN move pollen around. Occasionally they do, but mostly they don't. I'm guess it's a lot of work for them. It's easy to suck up some honey and move it. They have to dig the pollen out.