Pollen in Super

[davidharradine]

I have a colony that was part of an artificial swarm about a month ago, with last year's queen. After the AS, all was good and she was laying well. Inspecting yesterday, she seems to have been off laying for a while, which I'm assuming is because the weather's been so bad - not much brood, some eggs, quite patchy.

However, there's a super on the hive and it has very large amounts of pollen in it, probably more pollen that honey, and there's not much pollen in the brood chamber. What might this mean?

Thankyou...

 

[Nellie]

Short answer is that they don't have enough room on the Brood frames for brood and stores so the pollen is going into the super.

A single national or even 14x12 brood box is frequently these days not big enough on its own to contain the brood nest and stores that they need.

 

[protheroe]

all my hives store pollen in the 1st super

 

[Finman]

.
I use 3 brood system and no excluder.

During summer bees store pollen in lowest box and it has few brood. It is cold place when entrance is wide open.
Then next boxes have brood and pollen frames on sides against cold walls.

In Autumn I push the colony down and the hive rear winter bees with that pollen store.

How you get pollen off from combs? - Only way is use combs as brood combs. Bees eate pollen.

My hives do not store pollen in honey boxes. They prefer to store them down.

 

[Finman]

all my hives store pollen in the 1st super

Bees' habit is to store pollen next to brood.

 

[Tom Bick]

I sometimes get pollen in the first super but then I often walk a fine line regarding room in the BB. I have one hive this year with a lot of pollen in the first super this year.

This super will stay on top of the BB over the QX and all the other supers will be placed over this super.

I have noticed plenty of pollen in the hives this year and have put this down to the bad weather we had a couple of weeks ago, the bees had virtually no nectar during the bad weather and they concentrated on the pollen

 

[davidharradine]

Thanks everyone. It's certainly not because of a lack of space in the brood box - as I said this is a colony a few weeks after an artificial swarm, and most of the foundation in the brood box is undrawn - they have loads of room.

I'm not worried about it, was just interested to hear what people thought. Now wondering whether they'll move things around now the weather's improving.