hey everybody I just got done doing a
little bit of trimming around the
Beehive here and I thought that this
would be a good time to show you about
the pollen collector that we have on
this now this is still it's about 7 a.m.
in the morning here and the bees are
still a little sleepy which is why it
makes it nice and easy come out here and
you can see all I do is I come out here
and there's the mulch that keeps it down
right by the entrance but then I trim
back about a you know was about four
feet and then let it go crazy from there
but anyway I digress I can do all that
early in the morning without agitating
the bees well this is the pollen
collector here this is the tray that
collects the pollen and then around the
other side there's a false wall and you
can actually change this out you can
take this wall out and put it to the
other side this is a pollen collector
made by man Lake if you keep bees I'm
sure you know of the company man lake
and I believe they call this a superior
pollen collector but the way it's
supposed to work is there's a very thin
entrance right there and then if you can
see it around all the bees there is a
there's four different holes like
portals circular holes above that and
the way it's supposed to work is you put
these plastic tubes inside of those
holes makes it so the bees can't go in
that way and then that forces the bees
to go in through the small hole which
forces them to pass through a channel of
hardware cloth that takes off the pollen
and then they can crawl back out through
the tubes and the directions for Mann
Lake say to take the tubes off two to
three days per week
to make sure that the bees get enough
pollen but what I have found is that
since I am doing this for my own use and
not for any sort of commercial
production that I can leave the tubes
off entirely let the bees pick which
entrance they want and I still get a ton
of pollen look at that that's yeah weak
there's less Saturday we put this on so
that's one week worth of pollen and
there you go we can we'll take that out
and put it in the freezer and store it
that way until we use it for medicinals
or throw it in some cooking or whatever
we decide to do with it but I thought
that that was a good little tip to show
that you don't have to put those tubes
on at all some of the bees will still go
through that flat opening and you can
still get the pollen one thing I do wish
man lake would change about this design
and something that I will probably do on
my own in the future you see this this
is an eighth frame and I've got the
bottom riser on it which has the 45
degree ramp I really wish that that had
a bigger entrance landing even if you
look at just a regular landing board
going up to here where it's flat you
have so much more space for all those
bees and over there you've got this
little perch it almost looks like it's
supposed to be a birdhouse or something
so I really like to see a bigger landing
board now if you put this riser you put
the the riser underneath that you could
but I mean look you're already getting
another shallow super-sized depth out of
that and then you go put this on you
just keep right raising that beehive
higher and higher and I don't think
anybody really wants to do that
so I'm thinking at some point making my
own little 45 degree wedge just with
some triangles and attaching it directly
to the front of that and I'll just cut
out a bit of a rectangle in the middle
and let it slide under and around the
platform they've already got so I hope
that was somewhat interesting and thanks
to all of our patrons who make projects
like this even possible based on the a
little over wasn't an ounce I'm going to
say it wrong I'm going to say it wrong I
think last time we got what did we get
I can't remember well I'll put right
here on the screen the weight of what we
got out of here and you can kind of look
in the future and see just how much you
might expect to get out this is a colony
that is in ten frame mediums so they're
the six and five eight boards 10 frames
wide and they're currently I'm going to
call it two and a half brood boxes deep
because that third one there they've
just started laying out so you know
pretty well established colony and give
you an idea for how much they're
producing in about a week without the
tubes on at all thanks for watching
we'll see you next time bye
