Laurence Edwards says pollen at the hive entrance doesn't mean a queen or brood is present. He's seen colonies with heavy pollen stores collapse or die out, and drone-laying queens can look healthy from outside while raising only males. The only way to know if a colony is actually healthy is to open it up and check for a queen, eggs, and brood.
I'm looking at the entrance of my hive and there's pollen going in. That means there's a queen. That means they're queen right. That means there's brood. What a load of nonsense. Trust me, it isn't the case. The amount of times I've come to a colony in the spring and you look at the entrance, you look at all the pollen coming in, beautiful dandelion pollen and snowdrop pollen, and then you go into the colony and there's no queen and there's no brood. Literally no sign of her whatsoever. And you've just got 10 frames of stores and lots and lots of pollen. That happens regularly to me in the spring. That is just a pretty average dead out, and you'll see that the colonies die very quickly after that. Same applies to a drone-laying queen. You can go into a colony, everything looks good, you've got pollen coming in at the entrance, you open it up, perfect cluster of bees early in the season, and you pull out the frames and you've just got 10 frames of drone brood. And even when a colony is on its absolute absolute last legs, if it's succumbing to robbing, if it's succumbing to wasp pressure, you'll still see bees bringing in pollen. Bringing in pollen doesn't mean anything other than that there is pollen available nearby and the bees are going out and they're foraging it and they're bringing it back. They don't bring it back for any specific reason. If they bring it back and there's brood that needs feeding, okay, they'll feed it to brood, they'll mix it with the nectar, create their bee bread, feed it to the brood, If there's brood there. But if you go into your colonies, what's the first thing that you see generally on the outside frames? Frames of pollen. So the bees will go out and they'll collect that pollen anyway, bring it back in, store the pollen for when they need it. And they do not think, right, I've got a queen, so we're going to have larvae, we're going to have eggs, we're going to have mouths to feed, so I'll go out and get pollen. They're opportunistic foragers, and they will just go out and take whatever is available. So So sorry to burst anyone's bubble. Looking at your colony, saying there's pollen coming in, saying that everything is okay because pollen is there in the entrance— it is a total myth. It doesn't apply to bees. It means nothing more than there is pollen available. The only way to tell that everything's okay is by getting in there, seeing that you've got a queen, seeing that you've got eggs, brood in all stages, no disease. You need to do a full inspection to give it the thumbs up, to make sure your bees are okay and that they've got through the winter.
