# Will bees rob out old pollen?



## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Pollen doesn't get robbed in my experience. You can put them in another hive and the bees will either use it or remove it.


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## Scott Gough (Dec 10, 2015)

I agree with beemanddan. I have not seen pollen robbed out. I have a frame outside right now that had a little honey on it and a lot of pollen and the honey is gone and the frame is being totally ignored pollen still in tact. It is similar looking to the pollen frame shown by the OP. 

My question is about "entombed pollen". Michael Palmer mentioned in another thread about changing out entombed pollen frames. If I recall correctly entombed pollen gets a dark red color. Are there any other characteristics of entombed pollen that I can look for so that I do not waste space in a hive with an entombed pollen frame? 

I assume that if there is an entombed pollen frame in a hive the bees will not ever remove the pollen. Is that correct?

I did not mean to hijack the thread but I hope the questions posed are relevant to the OP's question.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Scott
My take on the entombed pollen was that the bees covered it cause it was dangerous in some way (pesticide or poisen plant). I am not sure when the comments were made that I am interpeting what was ment but more that is how I took it. So my conclution, right or wrong, was not that the bees might not use it if they were in some bind but more that you did not want them to use it under any circumstance cause it might hurt them.

So I don't know if they would use it or not but only that they covered it for a reason.

I know this does not answer the question you ask and I am too unexperianced to offer more then my thoughts above.
Cheers
gww


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## RedBarn (May 31, 2017)

I used some 10 year old frames last year with dry hard pollen in them. The bees cleaned that out and drug it out the bottom and tossed it off the ledge. 

I'm not sure what they would do with this still gooey pollen from last year though..... I'm gonna guess they would use it since if the bees were still in the hive the frames came from, they would have used it. ??

I don't know if I would be inviting problems by placing these frames with pollen in them into a swarm trap...

Maybe I should put them into a deep box, place above the inside cover so the bees will clean them out. Only question, is will they clean the pollen out like they would honey / nectar. I believe they clean out old frames this way as almost an internal robbing vs external robbing / open feeding.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

My experience is that the pollen is not robbed out when placing frames out to be cleaned. Aunts will clean it out but chew the bottoms out of the cells of wax foundation and it then gets drawn as drone if put back in a hive. I dont know what would happen with plastic foundation frames.


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## TexasFreedom (Feb 25, 2016)

With plenty of natural & fresh pollen available I understand why they are ignore it. But if that same pollen were brought out in Jan/Feb (at least here in TX), I wonder if they'd be more interested?

You don't look at the menu after you've eaten your meal!


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## bevy's honeybees (Apr 21, 2011)

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?252714-entombed-pollen

I don't see this in your pics (article link in this thread) I just thought it was interesting and worth re-posting.


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