Pollen question

[Burnette Bros]

I have 5 hives in central kentucky. They have done great all year. I am feeding now to make sure they have plenty to do them this winter. One of the hives have been bringing in pollen aggressively. Bout every bee that comes in that hive have pollen on their legs. The other hives right next to it are working hard but I don't see the pollen on their legs nearly as often. I don't understand how one hive will bring in that much more than one right next to it. For some reason that bunch of bees do look some bigger also. This years package bees. I have double hive bodies on all 5 hives.

[psfred]

Some hives store more pollen than others, some store more nectar and honey, and some just piddle along all summer and store next to nothing. Lots of variablitily in bees, alas, or we'd all have bumper honey crops every year on all our hives.

Two hives right next to each other can have bees on entirely different things at the same time. My neighbor, who is retired, seems to spend some time watching my bees -- they are right behind his compost pile -- and told me which ones were going in which direction the other day. From one all the bees were heading off north, the other hive had all the bees going west.

Peter

[Burnette Bros]

Thanks Peter, I was just wondering why the one hive was bringing in so much more pollen than the other hives. We have approximately 200 acres that join us. They haven't mowed any this year and it is loaded with goldenrods. I was wondering why the other hives wouldn't bringing in as much of the bright stuff.

[RayMarler]

Maybe the hive bringing in the most pollen, is the hive with the largest area of brood production going on at the moment.