Pollen substitute

[Moon]

Gonna set up another starter colony tomorrow and graft ten days after that. Doubtful that I'll end up with a good frame of pollen from one of my other colonies so I'm going to take an empty frame and put some pollen substitute in it instead and give it to the hive the day I graft. I have some dry bee pro pollen substitute from last year I used to make patties in the fall I was planning on packing into the empty frame and giving to my cell starter in lieu of a frame of freshly collected pollen. I know, I know it's not as good as freshly gathered pollen or even ACTUAL pollen, but the substitute should suffice right? Next year I'll have pollen traps setup early enough to harvest pollen for this application but this year I'm trying to make due with what I've got while I learn.

[beedeetee]

I don't know about Wyoming, but don't your hives have pollen at the end of June? Pollen just isn't a problem for most of us northern states at this time of year. I wouldn't want my queens raised on pollen sub. They don't need a whole frame to raise a few queens.

[Moon]

It depends, we're (at least my area) in a dearth right now and I plan on grafting between 50-150 cells. I know there is no nectar coming in and I didn't see any pollen coming in yesterday when I was out there. I don't want to raise queens on sub either but as I said:

>I know, I know it's not as good as freshly gathered pollen or even ACTUAL pollen, but the substitute should suffice right?

I'm not going for first class queens here I'm going for the experience. Next year I'll harvest pollen before I do this.