dropped pollen

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echidna

New Bee
Joined
Oct 3, 2019
Messages
41
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17
Location
Yorkshire
Hive Type
None
I have my varroa inspection boards in most the time, at a low position, so I can get some idea of what's going on without opening up the hive. At times like now when the bees are bringing in a lot of pollen, I see a large number of dropped loads on the board. I'm wondering if walking on the mesh floor sometimes knocks the pollen off. Alternatively, perhaps the bees drop it but then can't recover it once it's fallen through the mesh.
Does anyone else see this? Is it likely to be a significant loss which I should try to rectify (e.g. by making at least part of the floor solid)? I do feel very sorry for the bees who have gone to all that effort for nothing, but obviously that's anthropomorphising and the colony may not suffer at all.
 
I have my varroa inspection boards in most the time, at a low position, so I can get some idea of what's going on without opening up the hive. At times like now when the bees are bringing in a lot of pollen, I see a large number of dropped loads on the board. I'm wondering if walking on the mesh floor sometimes knocks the pollen off. Alternatively, perhaps the bees drop it but then can't recover it once it's fallen through the mesh.
Does anyone else see this? Is it likely to be a significant loss which I should try to rectify (e.g. by making at least part of the floor solid)? I do feel very sorry for the bees who have gone to all that effort for nothing, but obviously that's anthropomorphising and the colony may not suffer at all.
Yes. It happens.
 
No harm will come. In summer I purposefully use pollen traps to remove pollen from their legs, so that I can feed it back in late winter. They carry on storing pollen and rearing brood.
 

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