Trapping and selling pollen

Pollen is the colony's protein. Every gram you take is a gram not fed to brood, and that is the first thing to be clear about before deciding to trap it.

You are taking food from the colony

Trap only from strong colonies, only during a heavy flow, and only for short periods. The usual practice is to run the trap for a few days and then open it for a few days, so the colony can restock.

A colony raising brood in a dearth should not be trapped at all. If you are unsure which you have, you are looking at the entrance question again: heavy pollen traffic means brood to feed, and that is the colony's claim on it before yours.

How trapping works

A trap sits at the entrance with a grid the bees must squeeze through, which knocks some of the pollen pellets off their legs into a screened drawer below. No trap takes everything, and that is deliberate.

Empty it daily, or more often in humid weather. Fresh pollen is wet, it molds fast, and it is attractive to hive beetles, so a drawer left for a week is a problem rather than a harvest. The screen must keep the drawer separate from the colony for the same reason.

Drying and storing it

Fresh pollen must be dried or frozen quickly. Freezing is simplest for small quantities and keeps color and appearance well. Drying needs low heat and good airflow, and overheating darkens it and damages what people are buying it for.

Clean it after drying by removing bee parts and debris, which is tedious and is most of the labor in the product. Store dried pollen sealed and cool, and freeze anything you are not selling soon.

Selling it honestly

Pollen is sold as a food, it is priced well above honey by weight, and the market is people who already buy from you. It is not a product that finds new customers on its own.

Two honest cautions belong on your table rather than buried. Pollen can cause serious allergic reactions in some people, including people who are fine with honey, so a first-time buyer should start with a very small amount. And the local pollen allergy claim is the one every customer will raise: what you can truthfully say is where it came from and when, not what it will do for their hay fever.

References