How To Trap Pollen - It's SO EASY!

Today I'm going to show you how to catch pollen using a pollen trap. So I am here in Gozo Island in Malta with Amano from Melita Bees, and it is really important in Malta to be able to go out and catch sufficient pollen when there is a flow on like this. And needless to say, how calm are these bees? I can just stand here, no veil, no nothing, and I'm not getting stung because they are the very calmest bees going. But for bees, and especially for people who are rearing queens, really important to be able to give the bees sufficient natural protein in the form of pollen. And it's much more preferable to feed the bees the pollen from the natural area as opposed to kind of importing pollen to feed the bees. Huge disease risk with importing pollen. And you can give the bees pollen sub, but it's nowhere near as good as the real thing. So it is very early March here in Malta. I'm out here doing a trip, all things beekeeping, all things queen rearing. And a really important part of that process is going out and learning how to trap pollen. So in the background there, you will see Amano. He's going through all of these colonies here, have pollen traps that live on the colony full time. Now, that doesn't mean it's stripping off all of the pollen from every single bee every time. Has a little door that opens and a door that closes. So you can just open the door and none of the pollen is collected. And when you close the door, the pollen begins to get collected. So what we're doing in this apiary here now— I shouldn't say we— what Amano is doing in this apiary here now is going along, closing all of those pollen trap doors, and then we'll come back tomorrow. Only ever leave them closed for 24 hours, and then the most amount of pollen will come in in the morning. We'll be back here or another apiary tomorrow morning to collect that pollen. But let me show you now just how it works by closing these doors, and you will not believe the range of pollen at the end of this. Let me show you just these different colours that are on there first. So Amano uses that to ensure that the bees are able to navigate back to their hive with very, very little drift, even though all of the bees kind of are right next to each other in this apiary here. Just look at the amount of bees coming back. It's early March here at the moment, but the bees are going out taking lots and lots of forage. So what Amano was saying, at this time of the year, huge amounts of brood is emerging. Which means that you're seeing a lot of orientation flights. And then for the bees who are out orientating, leaving the hive for the very first time, sometimes a little bit difficult for them to find their way back in. He says though, give it an hour or so and they'll all be back inside. And then tomorrow it won't be quite as bad. But this time of the year, there's just a lot of orientation going on, a lot of young new bees. And that is what brings in a lot of pollen, a huge workforce like that. So you can see how those pollen traps go in. Super simple. You've just got this piece of plastic here made by Nikko that pulls straight out. I'll just give you a close-up of those holes there. So those holes are perfectly sized to allow the bees to go through but not to allow the pollen to go through. So a bee will come in, it will go through there, the bee will go the other side, and the pollen will drop down into this yellow cage below. And that is where all the pollen is Stored. So you can see there now, Amano has just opened that really, really simple. And if you just close it again, please, Amano. And you can see then it just gets closed like that, so the bees can't get through. And then they have no other option than to go through these little holes, which collects all that pollen. So they leave one hole like that just to let the drones in and out. You don't want the drones getting stuck in that pollen trap. Do you want to just show me on this one how it works? See after. 2 minutes, the first pollen is arriving. Wow, so look, after just 2 minutes you can see there is a tiny little bit of pollen that's been collected. So that's just from now. So within literally 5 minutes, that is the amount of pollen that has been collected. You can imagine what would happen over the course of 24 hours. Hoping that that is going to be completely full, but wait till the end to see how much pollen these guys collect. And we will be back here in 24 hours to see just how much pollen these bees have collected. In the meantime, let me show you some of the flowers that are available for the bees to go out and forage on. Malta at this time of the year is absolutely incredible, and there are thousands of flowering plants early on in the season. So after blocking those pollen traps about 18 hours ago, as we were driving down here with Amano, I was saying, come on, how much pollen are we going to get? Is it going to be a centimeter? Is it going to be nothing? Are they going to be full? And he said, oh, well, you know, it's raining yesterday and the pollen doesn't come in until a couple of days after. So he was trying to deflate me a little bit and say, you know, don't get your hopes up. Oh my God, wait until you see how much pollen these bees have collected in about 18 hours, but only really like 3 or 4 hours flying time. So Amano has taken me to the first one. Honestly, this is the first one that he's gone and taken out. And look at all of that incredible pollen. Wow. How much do you think is there, Romano? Weight? I think 200 grams. So about 200 grams. So that's about 4 hours worth of flying. And look at the variety of that pollen. You've got yellows and oranges, golden browns. You've got dark, dark black ones. So the darker one you can see there is the poppy. And then what are you doing here to clean? Okay, so I love this cleaning device. It's just a poly box, a piece of varroa mesh, and then at the bottom a piece of queen excluder. And then that just rests on a bit of plastic like that to give the space for the pollen to go through. Everything here in Malta is homemade, really cheap, but very, very effective. I love it. So this is the method that Amano uses. Really simple. He's got a quadri-nuc, I think, there. Homemade. So look at all that pollen coming out. That is beautiful. I can't believe you've got that much in such a short time. You have to clean it and you have to dry it or it will go mouldy. And I was speaking to Amano yesterday and he was saying that they actually sell a huge amount of this. So it's not so much for kind of feeding their own bees. They actually do sell it as a product. So it's gone through the mesh, it's gone through the queen excluder. Amano's off to go and collect some more pollen now. Let's see what the next one can do. Wow! What's the light one there? The white is the wild cardo, like the artichoke. Okay, yeah, wild artichoke. Nice. So next one along. Look at that, it's nearly full up there. It's very moist, the pollen, and you have to dry it. Yeah, so it doesn't go moldy. Yeah. So Amano said he's found the best yielder, and no surprise, it's the one on the end. Whoa, look at that! That is a lot of pollen for a few hours' forage. So can you believe just how much pollen was collected there in literally about 4 to 5 hours worth of flying? And from only like 4 or 5 of those colonies there. Absolutely astounded with how much pollen is here. I really, really am. A huge selection, tons of flowers, loads of forage, beautiful, beautiful forage pollen.