Honey is the primary food of wintering bees, but it’s not the only essential bee food in the hive. Pollen is also necessary for the colony’s winter survival and success in the new season.
Why is pollen needed during the winter?
The metabolism of wintering bees, including their amazing ability to keep themselves warm and alive in frigid temperatures, is fueled by the dense carbohydrates of honey. But adult nurse bees also need pollen in order to manufacture brood food to feed the new larvae once brooding resumes.
In all but the coldest areas, the queen will have started to lay eggs by early February. Three days later, there will be hungry larvae to feed. Nurse bees consume stored pollen and then manufacture food for the larvae in their mandibular and hypopharyngeal glands. As the larvae continue to grow, they will need increasing amounts of brood food, and the nutrition from pollen that it contains, in order to keep their physical development on track. Honey calories are also needed, of course, but only pollen provides the essential fats and proteins needed for the transformation from a tiny egg to a fully developed adult bee.
A larva’s first meal is provided by the nurse bees on its first day (the fourth day since the egg was laid) and that feeding will be repeated hundreds of times per day for the next day or two. After that, the pace of feeding slows somewhat, but their diet is still rich in fats and proteins. These nutrients are needed so that the larvae can build up internal supplies of lipids (fats), glycogen (sugars), and amino acids (from proteins). After just six days of feeding by the nurse bees, the larvae begin the pupation process with all the nutritional resources already stored in their bodies to make the physical metamorphosis from a blind, legless grub into a fully-formed insect with two antennae, three body segments, four wings, and six legs.
When the newly-emerged adults have pushed their way out after pupating for 12 days, they are fully-formed but not yet fully developed, particularly their hypopharyngeal glands. For the first days after emerging, they must continue to consume very high levels of protein and fats from pollen to allow their glands to fully develop so that they, after about a week, can begin to use those glands to make food for the successive rounds of brood.
Pollen is not only the essential nutrient for the developing larvae before pupation, but it is also the fuel for newly-emerged bees to continue developing until they can feed the next round of brood, and so on. Any interruption in the steady progression of new cohorts of nurse bees threatens the survival of the colony, because the bodies of overwintered bees are simultaneously becoming physiologically exhausted in the process of raising the earliest rounds of brood.
Where do honey bees get pollen in winter?
Lucky
bees in mild winter areas can forage intermittently on pollen from early
flowering plants, such as willows, witch hazel, and skunk cabbage. But they,
like their northern cousins, must also rely on stored pollen to tide them over
when conditions prevent just-in-time delivery of fresh pollen.
Incoming pollen is taken directly to the frames when there is open brood to
make it efficient for nurse bees to use it right away. You will often see a
temporary arc of pollen-filled cells surrounding active brood areas. This
short-term larder will be steadily consumed and the newly-emptied cells will be
filled with eggs as the brood area expands outward.
Whenever there is a surplus during the warm months, excess pollen supplies will be stored as bee bread in more remote parts of the combs. Bee bread is made when the pollen-processing bees mix it with their saliva in order to activate yeasts in an anaerobic (oxygen-free) form of fermentation that preserves the pollen’s nutritional value for the long term. A thin coat of honey glazes over the top layer in each cell to keep the bee bread safely sealed up.
Why would you need to feed pollen supplements in late winter?
Honey bees’ innate hoarding behavior makes them store pollen for use during periods when they can’t forage. But sometimes bad weather or poor flowering conditions reduce the amount of pollen they’ve been able to gather. Beekeepers, too, can interfere with a colony’s storage plans by moving frames from colony to colony and when making splits that wind up shorting a new colony’s pollen resources. Sometimes particularly cold weather in winter makes it risky to leave the cluster to retrieve bee bread stored in lower boxes.
In short, there are many reasons why a colony might need beekeeper-supplied pollen resources. Maintaining an uninterrupted supply of pollen during the spring build-up is an effective way to get your bees set for a successful summer season. Whether your plans range from making a good honey crop to having colonies strong enough to make splits or nucs, it all starts with the real “business” of a colony of honey bees: raising brood. And brood production is strongly influenced by the pollen resources available to the colony at the time.
Global Pollen patties have natural pollen in them -is that safe for my bees?
That’s a very astute question! Yes, they have natural pollen in them but the pollen has been sterilized with electron beam radiation to ensure that there is no risk of disease transmission from the bees that originally collected it.
How to add pollen to a hive:
Although you can buy pure pollen, bees don’t accept that form very readily and it’s much too expensive to use inefficiently. Most beekeepers use some form of pollen substitute, usually based on soy flour and baker’s yeasts, to provide the right amount of protein. We offer Global 15% Pollen patties that also have 15% of added natural pollen to make them extra-nutritious for your bees. Available in pre-made slabs, covered in perforated wax paper, they are applied to the hive in the same way as winter patties. Both winter patties and Global pollen supplement patties can be used at the same time, when needed.
What’s the difference between winter patties and Global pollen supplemental patties?
This is a very important point to understand. Winter patty is provided to replace insufficient honey (or syrup) stores and can be used continuously all winter, if needed. It provides a high level of carbohydrates (sugars in place of honey) and has a very low level of protein. Pollen supplement patties, which have much higher – 50 % or more – levels of protein in them, will increase the need for the bees to go out to poop. If cold weather prevents the bees from going out on regular cleansing flights for weeks at a time, their abdomens can fill with fecal matter, leading to dysentery and other health issues. For that reason, if your goal is just to make sure they have enough calories to survive, you should feed your bees low protein, high carbohydrate winter patty, which will be better for them.
Pollen patties, on the other hand, are intended primarily to stimulate – and then maintain – a higher level of brood rearing, so the timing of their use is critical. Like many things to do with bees, location plays a critical role in the timing.
When should you add pollen patties?
Pollen supplementation will increase brood production – and thus increase future hive population – beyond what might have happened without this intervention. When do you want to have a lot of bees in your hives? If honey production is your goal, then you want a big, foraging-age population at the start of the honey flow in order to have an extra-large cohort of bees with nothing better to do than gather nectar. To use pollen patties effectively to achieve this goal, start adding pollen patties about 6 weeks before your usual honey flow. If you aren’t sure when your honey flow typically starts, ask other beekeepers near you because this is a very local thing.
Pollen Supplement Patties & Small Hive Beetles
Hive beetles are crazy for pollen patties. If these pests are in your area, offer pollen patty in smaller pieces (a half a pound at a time), replenishing it more frequently. The idea here is to have the bees eat up the patty before any SHB eggs can hatch into larvae. Just about the grossest thing you’ll ever find in a hive is a piece of pollen patty engulfed in a writhing mass of SHB larvae.
Is there any downside to adding pollen patties?
Yes, and it’s the reverse of having a too-small population in late spring/early summer. If you stimulate brood production, the bees will respond and raise more bees into adulthood. More bees in the hive, especially as you approach the start of your swarm season, can also spell trouble. Crowding, especially in the brood nest area, is one of the factors that can tip the odds toward swarming. In most areas, the swarm season precedes the main honey flow so the timing of your population build-up can be tricky. A hive which swarms is often somewhat of a bust honey-wise, even if you catch the swarm. Two smaller colonies do not add up to same honey-surplus-storing potential as one, undivided large colony. If you plan to use pollen supplementation to manipulate hive population, you should also have a plan to manage your increased swarm risks, including having equipment on hand to house an emergency split, if needed, to prevent your bees from taking to the trees.
If you start pollen supplementation, don’t stop early!
Keep on providing pollen patties once you start, until there is warm-enough weather for daily foraging and you see the bees bringing in pollen every day. This tells you they are meeting their daily maintenance needs. In some ways, inconsistent or prematurely stopping pollen supplementation is worse than not starting at all. Because brood started, but then abandoned when pollen resources fail, wastes vital resources that otherwise would have remained unused and available to later-started brood. In addition, an insufficient, or intermittent supply of pollen is considered a risk factor for expression of European Foul Brood. A chilly, rainy, spring season without a good pollen availability sometimes leads to outbreaks of EFB. It’s not that the lack of pollen directly causes EFB (the disease caused by a bacterium, Melissococcus plutonius) but a spotty diet appears to make the larvae more vulnerable if the bacteria are already present. So, make sure you don’t inadvertently imitate a “poor-foraging-spring” by being off-and-on-again with your pollen supplementation program.
From BetterBee Newsletter and only collected here in case it is removed