[leamon]

Is there a practical way to keep the bees from storing a lot of pollen along with the honey in honey supers?
leamon

 

[Riley]

It's been my experience that bees store pollen up when they want to expand the brood nest up and/or raise drones; otherwise I've never had a problem with pollen in the honey supers. So I would check to see if the brood nest is overcrowded or honey-bound.

 

[fish_stix]

That is correct! Bees store pollen close to, or in brood areas so they can feed brood. You may need to increase the size of your brood area. The pollen doesn't hurt anything as far as the honey goes. It will just be filtered out after you extract, if it even comes out of the comb. Most of it will stay during extraction.

 

[leamon]

Thanks for the replies. This was above a shallow, deep and about 2 or 3 shallows. This hive has been booming so maybe they needed that much brood space. It is a testimony to Walt's CB system. It was large in early spring, I CBed 2 shallows and it has done well, 4 shallows so far and probably at least 1 more. I don't extract (not enough to justify an extractor). I squeeze the comb with a home made press system. I wondered about giving the combs and pollen back to the bees. An thought on that?
leamon

 

[rkereid]

The bees will clean all of the remaining honey out of the leftovers. The wax is yours to use after that.

Richard