Laurence Edwards demonstrates installing an Abelo pollen trap on a honeybee hive. He collects a large amount of pollen in 24 hours and explains why you should never leave the trap on longer than 48 hours to avoid starving the colony. The trap costs £30-£40 and works well enough on a National hive despite imperfect fit.
Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today we're going to do a demo using the Abello pollen trap. So we discussed this in a previous video, I did a little bit of a review, but now we're going to do a product test and we're going to see how much pollen we can get within this pollen trap. As discussed previously, this isn't perfectly designed for a National, but it does fit. You can buy these from Abelo. What you need to make sure is that you do it on a strong, strong flow. So there's a really strong flow going on here at the moment, and you make sure you pick your strongest colony. Don't put it on for longer than 48 hours because you can deprive the colony of pollen. So we're going to show you how to set it up, and then we'll fast forward and show you how much pollen we've collected. So we showed you this on the previous video. This is the pollen box. The entrance is there, they go in that way, and then they come up through these holes, and then the pollen comes out in the tray that side. So very, very standard pollen design, pollen floor design. We'll see how it works out. Like I say, choose your strongest colonies, really, really good weather, no longer than 48 hours. So that's the kind of size of colony you want to put this on, filling all of the frames. We're just about to super up on this colony as well. They'll have loads of stores of pollen anyway, so they can bear a couple, like 48 hours of me collecting some pollen. So don't do it on a weak one where they're really, really crying out for pollen. You want to do it on your biggest, strongest colony. So then all you do, it's very simple. Move the whole colony off to one side. Surprisingly heavy. Put the pollen floor in its place, make sure that it's completely level, and make sure that this sliding tray is all the way to the left, otherwise they can get through it. And then you want to take the colony and put that onto the floor. And then shake the floor out in front. And then we're going to pop a super on here as well because it's absolutely jam-packed full of bees, this one. So we've got a Suyanti super, drawn comb, and then the way that I like to do it is I have 8 or 9 frames per super. And then I just space them randomly by eye, um, because I want nice chunky thick comb. Okay. So just for reference, that's the spacing that I start off with. The bees will get up there, they'll propolise that into place. We've got 9 frames there in a super. Once they start drawing it out, um, to an additional thickness, I'll probably reduce it down to 8, and then you end up with 8 really, really fat chunky frames that work well in the extraction machine. So we'll give them 48 hours, we'll come back, see how much pollen we've tracked. So when we cut off from the last video, the next day the weather was absolutely terrible. We had 50 mile an hour plus winds, so I took the pollen floor off that hive and just gave up basically, because there's no point doing it if the bees aren't flying. So then 2 days after, the nice weather came back and I put the pollen floor on this hive here. So I chose a really, really nice strong hive And that was 24 hours ago, so the pollen floor has been on for 24 hours. The setup was exactly the same, it's just on a different hive. So we're going to go inside now and take a look, and I'm going to show you how much pollen I've collected in 24 hours. So I'm just turning the floor around just so you can see access to the drawer, and then all you do is you pull the drawer out, and amazingly That is what I've collected in 24 hours from the Abello pollen trap. Look at all that pollen! I'm quite amazed at that. That's 24 hours worth. Quite a haul. So you can imagine, you know what I mean, if you did this on a number of colonies, you bought a number of these floors, you, you would get so much pollen in a really, really quick time. Looking at the pollen there, you can see, I mean, the majority of it's probably coming from one plant. I'll have to go away and have a look at what color that pollen is, not entirely sure. And then there's a little bit of yellow in there as well, probably about 2 or 3% of that yellow stuff, but mainly kind of like a limey green golden color. But I have to say, I'm really, really impressed with that. That is a huge amount of pollen to have collected In just 24 hours. The reason I'm collecting this pollen at the moment is I'm starting my queen rearing this week. I've seen loads of really, really nice pollen frames, but I also want to kind of make sure that I've got enough of real natural pollen so I can jam-pack a frame full of it. It makes for really, really good strong queens because they feed the royal jelly which they make using the pollen. So that's the reason that I'm doing it. Absolutely amazing. I'm really, really happy with this. Like I say, this has been on for 24 hours, and that's more than enough pollen there to create a nice pollen frame. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to take the pollen floor off. Like I said, only do this for 24-hour stints. I'm going to collect my pollen, and I'm going to go and put the pollen floor on another strong hive, and I'm going to collect some more pollen. But I have to say, I'm really, really happy with this pollen floor. It's quite a bit cheaper than some of the other pollen floors on the market. It really doesn't cost that much at all. I think it's about £30 or £40. It's not a perfect fit for the National in that it's not the exact same dimensions, but it works absolutely fine. Like, the bees have no issues with it. There's no kind of loose gaps or anything like that. And so, you know, I mean, I'll continue to use these going forward. Really, really happy with them. So if you're interested in buying them, Abelo sell these pollen floors, and I can definitely give it a really, really good rating. So I'm off now. I'm going to go and put that pollen floor on a different hive and collect some more pollen, but I hope you've enjoyed the review. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.
