Trapping Bee Pollen | Three Traps, Three Methods

well hey there everyone this is Barry's best honey I'm Mike and I do bees and I'm still doing bees I've been doing bees all morning because I've been making a video for y'all here on June 8th welcome to Southeast [Music] Louisiana that's right folks June 8th got done making another video uh going to make a second one cuz there was just too much uh footage in the other to try and even attempt to um do this one and what I'm doing today is the last thing I'm doing today as after I have assessed honey supers that's all not honey bees honey supers uh I'm going to put some pollen traps out now uh in a normal dir situation here in Southeast Louisiana in my neck of the woods I will get pollen in the summer through the dir to an extent not a lot but it picks up as we get closer to fall obviously and I'm going to uh get my traps on a little ear earlier usually um I don't put them on before honey Harvest but I got a couple colonies I can put them on a swarm that had been caught uh we did a video on it it was a swarm I caught uh we did a we did the shake with the basket the waist basket and that thing grew really well and I actually used it as a brood Factory to make nukes for those queens that uh I introduced uh last week so what I'm doing today is I'm going to put a pollen trap on it but I'm going to show you the pollen traps I have I didn't run P last year cuz it wasn't a dir it was a drought we had nothing our dir usually yields a slow little bit of nectar here and there and and so really I guess you really couldn't call a true dir cuz there is a little bit of nectar in the summer but the pollen slows down quite a bit and the nectar goes down to almost nothing and the nests shrink and during the drought everything went away everything was burned up dry and dead no nectar no pollen no anything and I underestimated that should have had some sort of pollen sub on them it hurt me pretty bad hopefully we don't have that this year so any amount of pollen I want to trap I've trapped poen in the past I don't usually trap a lot um I want to get into it more and I want to start beginning to do it in the uh I want to begin to do it in the spring so that I can get a better haul um so I can have more throughout the year cuz it sells very fast I tried it out a few years ago and it sold quick but it's a process you got to trap it you got to preserve it until you dry it you got to dry it you got to wiow it you got to clean it basically and then you can ball it and sell it and you got to weigh it and all that good stuff so I do like the the pollen trapping but it's kind of tricky because you don't want to take too much but you know at the same time you got to take enough so you need you know more than one trap is what I had figured out so I also need to be able to dedicate more than one Colony this year the plan was a try spring but you know I've been complaining more than you want to hear I know about time and all that I just didn't have it um so I didn't do it but I'm going to do it in the fall and usually I get summer in the fall I get a good haul so here's the traps I got I have three types I have this is the Sundance this is the man Lake and then these I you can get these from a lot of diff different brands and companies um and they all work all right each one has its own differences personally I like the Sundance the best uh I think they make a rear drawer one I got the side drawer if you ever get one I would suggest a rear drawer cuz it limits you to where if you have stands with hives close together you can't get to them but what I like about this one is it actually uses the bottom board the existing bottom board let me get a bottom board I'll show you this is a super old I think a man Lake years ago rotten old bottom board that I pulled from a hive to replace it so this trap simply goes on the existing bottom board okay and of course you tighten this up and if we were to all right and that's all it does it's really neat and then we would simply move the colony up in this box okay this would go all the way up and it closes the entrance to the box and so what you're doing now is if you leave it like this now your bees use where the regular bottom board was they go through here but this is trapping pollen when you're done trapping pollen you loosen this screw drop this down and you block it and now they go through this and they go into the normal Colony how that works is now they can go up and into the colony right here these cones they're for drones so drones can get out the bees won't come back up through those so we're trapping pollen we bring this up of course using a hive tool makes it easier you just pry it up pops up it makes them go through here they now have to go in here they go through these little holes you can't see it in there but when we lay this down and for they have to come back out of here and up into the colony well there's a screen they go through and the pollen drops out and it will then drop into our side drawer okay simple as that I like this one CU it uses the existing bottom board it's easy to use you just simply Slide the trap door up or down and it's done the man Lake on the other hand side drawer here's my side drawer it uses these tubes I don't like this setup now this thing works I'm not going to say it doesn't work it does work it has the same setup okay so when you're not trapping pollen they go in the holes they go up into the hive right when you when you decide you're going to trap pollen you put the these tubes in the holes okay these tubes go in okay I got four of them now here's the thing the bees can no longer go into the colony they won't find these holes they won't go in them one or two might find them but they won't go in them and that allows drones out but drones now can't go in them that's an issue there and it forces them into this hole when they go through this hole again they go in they have to make a U-turn come up and they drop their pollen through the screen the screen pulls it off their legs into the drawer which is in the side okay easy enough right the problem is now guess what you're trapping pollen for two to three days it's time to you you don't want to trap them too long you bring them back you take these out now cuz now I don't want to trap pollen problem with this trap you'll see these two Nails I have here I added is now the bees they'll still go through here and trap pollen now you're trapping pollen and you don't want to so what I did is I made a little board I can stick in here and this just keeps something from knocking it out and I can force them back into the hole that's the only thing I don't like about it is they reorient to that other hole and then they stay reoriented to that and you can't stop trapping without blocking the hole so that's how I do that one it works pretty good but uh just an extra step I'll use it then we have this one this one here it simply goes on to a bottom board these people have seen them I'm sure they fit in well we got this screw out here but you can see how this would fit into the entrance of the C of The Hive in fact let me show you on this other one all right so now let's try this other one these work good the only issue with these plastic ones is and the instructions usually tell you that is you need to empty them daily um because they're not very the tray with the pollen isn't very well protected from the rain it's simple there's the Trap uh the trap door the they have to go through that it knocks the pollen off it falls through a screen goes in here how do you stop trapping you get your hive tool your hand stick in here you slide it there's a little pin that holds it but the problem I found is the PIN there's a pin on the side and that's supposed to keep from falling and it will to an extent I don't want to take any chances I just stick a block of wood in here that way if it does fall it can only go so far and they can still go under so I'm not trapped and then when I want to trap I shut it now I'm trapping this one really easy got these here's the Drone escape on the side and it's co it's kind of conical shape but some bees will find that and go in it and this simply goes in like this and it's got these staples you can use uh to staple it but I just stick it in like so and it seems to hold and you just kind of block the entrances where you know make it where they can't come out and the majority of bees that go in okay that's the pollen traps I own and I'm going to go put the Sundance pollen trap in the colony right now and I'm going to take y'all with me now what I'll say is when we set these I don't like to I leave them I don't start trapping pollen for at least a week or so especially with the Sundance because they have to get used to an entrance that's 4 in higher now and they'll all gather on the front the bees fine way in um just got to give them time but that's what I do I let them get oriented and then we go we we start traing pollen so let's take this out so as we get set up I'll let you guys watch the bees for a little bit and see if there's any pollen coming in um there's some coming in on I saw on another couple colonies but it's not real heavy right now I it's not the time of year for it to be there is still some nectar coming so I mean they're going to be bringing that in but this Colony here uh they should be building out a lot of brood and what I want to do is capitalize on any that starts coming in here in the next U month or so like I said normally do this after the honey Harvest cuz we see a lot of pollen up in through May and then when the big flow comes we don't see a bunch more and then uh the the dir we start seeing it coming in about Midway through that and then in the fall it pours in so we get it all now and get them used to [Laughter] this this was a swarm it did very well the only danger here with these here in the south is there's a there's a lot of high beetles and that's a problem I tell you what these bees have done good in this flow look at the bees in there wow it's wall to wall now I pulled those frames out and I put in empty frames cuz this was a I pulled uh one two pulled about six frames of brood out of this thing so I mean it just goes to show on a good year and a solid swarm you catch you can make honey um cuz I'll have to harvest some of this just to make space for them kind of makes me wonder what's all in here wow I just made these nukes two weeks ago so just goes to show no matter what we think when we see a flow and we think ah the flow's no good when we see flowers we got this idea that we know what's going on we really don't I got one that's oned me hard he just needs to leave one look at this look at this these are frames that I put in here that they drew out golly these bees went nuts yeah I'm going to have to harvest this box probably pull about four frames of Honey out of here all right let's see what the see they back filled this was look at this that flow came in really good should be winding down see if they left any spot for this queen yeah she's right she's laid it right back up then okay good I was afraid this whole thing was honey again I'm know I gave her a few frames to draw out this is one of them and I gave look at the eggs now this is a new camera let's see how well it picks them up but I I like man if they filled all this up the flow was wind down when I did this but still there is a lot of nectar well we get to do a hive inspection as well besides just this is full too so basically they filled this top box and the rest of the frames are honey so we're definitely going to be uh I'm going to yank probably about four frames of Honey out of here actually probably about six our bees need good amount of honey in the winter and they do a lot of flying looking for stuff and they don't find it they burn energy but they don't need 60 and 70 lbs um per box oh my gosh it's going to be heavy oh my goodness so that's heavy wo heavy heavy my goodness all righty here's our swarm this is a full box of bees I mean a full box all right let's get this bottom off oh that irritated them yep pick that bottom board up with them couple beetles in there all right that aggravated them all right let's kill some beetles see two of them that's something else I look for I'm putting a trap in I don't want to I don't want to lay it on a I see a pile of beetles coming out and sometimes these strong colonies will keep several be I mean a good amount of beetles at Bay usually you see a bunch when it's a wheat Colony but now and again you'll get those ones that look they'll they'll be strong but they I had one number five for years it just existed with beetles it didn't mind having beetles and uh it would that would be one I would not put a pollen trap on because there's too many nooks and crannies so we're going to put this in bees are looking for their home I'm going to drop the door down CU I don't want to trap and that's going to confuse them okay all right so now we've got the door down all the way close that set up they're going to be all against that door looking for their entrance going to get this Brew chamber back on cuz they're going to be wanted to get back home that's actually got a lot of weight in it too be honest with you now that's their new entrance see how they're going now now they're looking for their Old Entrance but they'll W they'll work their way up and we're going to get them used to this for a while we're not going to we're not going to uh start taking pollen and they're not really making any uh pulling any pollen in right now when the nectar slows down they'll they'll start bringing in a decent mix of both but they've got a lot of nectar in here and I'm not really concerned with swarming this time of the season Once once the nectar does stop but it appears it's still coming in a little bit so might move one of those oh my gosh that's heavy I might move one of those uh put this on here careful I don't squish any bees um I might move uh one of those supers out on here off those weak cives instead of harvesting it that way at least they got space cuz it's not always about where they can put nectar sometimes they just need space so they can cool down and they're not overheated and congested it's not always about the honey there we go do we see any pollen folks see they're all confused now so it's going to take them a couple hours but they'll figure it out somebody will start Fanning the entrance but I tell you it sure wouldn't hurt to put a box on there so I think I'm actually going to take one of those supers I've got off of a colony I want to pull from I might even take it off yeah I am I'm going to take a super off and bring one over here and let them finish it you know what I mean uh at least let them dry it out um so well there you go folks that's the pollen traps I use that's the Sundance model uh hopefully I'll have something to show you again that's not time to start trapping uh it will be soon um but I'm it'll be a couple weeks before I close that door got a lot going on in the next couple months I mean a lot traveling and honey Harvest and work and just a lot of stuff going on on so I'm going to try and shoot video every chance I get show you what we got going on definitely show you harvest try to show you the pollen man the bees are rolling exciting times all right guys I'm going to go ahead and let you go starting to warm up now now it's starting to get hot so I'm going to go ahead and this is the last thing I had to do I am going to move one super over to them I'm going find which one I want to move um that way they've got a little bit of space uh cuz they're they're hot they're they're in there and uh there's a lot of bees in there that's Pleasant to see that's a swarm folks that's a that was not a huge swarm that's probably about a 3 lb swarm at best and it was caught in oh I'd have to look back I want to say end of March beginning of April and it's feeling up a box uh would it have made a super I don't know because when I put that box on there they they it took them a while to get that done but that's a good healthy swarm yeah but other than that that's it I'm going to go uh do some other stuff I got to get done so anyway hope you enjoyed this video of how I do cuz it's not a how-to how I do pollen hey and if we get enough pollen this year I'll show you my process and drying it and how I dry it how I how I clean it and uh how I package it so all right guys look I'm going to let y'all go I appreciate all you guys watching hope you enjoyed this video this is Barry's best hunting I'm Mike and I do bees y'all have a wonderful wonderful week and may God bless you we'll see y'all later [Music]

Channel: Mike Barry

Views: 4,183

Keywords: beekeeping, bee hives, queen bee, queen, swarm, comb, honeycomb, brood, honeybees, honey, hive stand, bee suit, veil, hive, hives, hive tool, smoker, pheromone, hive beetle, varroa, mite

Id: AkRu1IBSPus

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 16 2024