¿Harvesting Pollen?

I'd imagine it's stored. Possibly in a vacuum sealed bag and in the fridge for winter months. Early Spring time may be added to a dry mixture of sugar crystals in the hive top feeder. Or drop some at the hive entrance to see if they pick it up immediately.

Oh, I thought there was some pollinating or something going on with it. Thank you for the response. Its just bee food then?

Yes, Primarily for brood. I just buy the stuff in 1 pound packages. Expensive, yet in my area may be needed for early Spring.

There are many beekeepers that clean the pollen, and package it for human consumption.
There is a ready market for it in some areas.

David

So, to repeat the original question, how do people who harvest pollen store it after harvest?

I'm also interested in an answer.

Wayne

The folks I know that harvest it for humans freez it for storage.

Freeze dry it or it will mildew.

I bottle it in bottles and take a few flyers with its uses to the farmers market on the weekends. I sold about 100lbs last summer at $10 a pound.

IABeeMan said:

I bottle it in bottles and take a few flyers with its uses to the farmers market on the weekends. I sold about 100lbs last summer at $10 a pound.

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I enjoyed the link in your signature.

mjdtexan said:

I enjoyed the link in your signature.

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Thank you mjd

We freeze our pollen in ziplocks for at least 24 hrs. as a preventative to kill wax moth eggs. the pollen for drying and sales is then processed in a food dehyrator at 95F. We use sheer curtain material to line the trays. We then take two large Plastic bowls (the static in the plastic helps the process) and winnow it like wheat in front of a fan to remove chaff, pollen dust, wings and such. The technique we do this is to pour the pollen slowly from one bowl to the other. We can clean about 50-60lbs an hour this way. Try it a couple of times and it will make perfect sense. Do it outside. Then it's into 5 gallon buckets with firm sealing lids to keep moisture and light out. Off to bottling when we do sales. We also sell it raw frozen and uncleaned in 1 lb. ziplock bags. The Dadant Cedar traps give us pretty clean pollen and we never see wax moths or larve in our pollen. $10/lb for dry - $15 for raw.

I enjoyed the link in your signature too