Is anyone else noticing something like this?

[Gerald Przybylski]

[medium honey super]
[medium honey super]
[medium honey super]
[Deep Brood Box.      ]
[Medium Brood Box. ]
[Medium Brood Box. ]

I went all the way through it today.  
Sixteen of the twenty medium brood frames were 50% or more plugged out with Pollen. 
Some of those pollen frames had a small patch of brood. Some had a little honey. 
Some of them were 90% filled with pollen.  The pollen frames were found in the boxes at the bottom of the hive.
The deep had about 7 pretty nice brood frames with very little honey or pollen. 

What's with all this pollen? 
Is anyone else finding too much pollen? 
This is the second moderately large hive this year that seems to have too much pollen.  Not a one-off. 

I moved the pollen frames to the top boxes of the hive, and gave the queen mostly drawn frames to work with in the medium boxes. 

Catherine, have you ever seen it before?

jerry

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[Robin Chatham]

5 keepers including myself so far this year have had docile bees turn spicy and every give turned out to be honey bound which means there's hardly any place for the queen to lay eggs because most cells are filled with pollen,  nectar or honey. 

Yes we are seeing loads more pollen/bee bread tha previous years. 

1. You may not need to requeen, bees calm down when pollen frames are removed and usable frames added.

2. Lotsa keepers inspect the hive but skip the bottom brood box claiming they don't want to bother the bees or the bees are getting spicier the lower they go and the keeper gets nervous and stops the inspection. If it's your first full inspection post winter,  go all the way. Maybe get a friend to help and have empty frames at the ready to exchange. 

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[Alan Pryor]

Yes i have had the spicy hive issue in a few hives. And have noticed a lot of pollen. 

Thanks Alan 

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[Bees & Beeks]

I had one hive that loved to bring back pollen.  I used to distribute pollen frames around my other hives.  I found the worker bees bring back pollen when nectar was difficult to find (summer dearth).   It’s been raining so I’m surprised you have so much pollen now.  Could it be bees replacing brood with pollen as hive move up?  

Mimi 

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On Apr 19, 2026, at 7:47 PM, Gerald Przybylski <gtp0...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Jim Veitch]

I regularly weigh the honey supers so I can tell pretty well when the nectar flow is on,  In Berkeley the nectar flow stopped 3-4 weeks ago, probably from the very hot and dry March we had. In spite of rain in April the nectar flow has not resumed and normally it would have run well into April, sometimes into May.

So at least in Berkeley and perhaps more generally in Berkeley/Oakland/El Cerrito the bees may have seen a relatively lower abundance of nectar as compared to pollen.

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[Bees & Beeks]

Ah so it seems per low volume of swarm calls, Spring has not officially arrived.  The wild flowers in park just started to bloom this weekend.  The fields have some but not overwhelming amount of yellow mustard greens in bloom as most years.  They seem to skip that phase this year and go into multi-color blooms of various wild plants that comes after yellow bloom.  

Mimi 

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 20, 2026, at 9:46 AM, Jim Veitch <jvei...@gmail.com> wrote:



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