In this video Laurence Edwards explains his experience with pollen substitute for honey bees, outlining when and why beekeepers might use it, especially for early brood stimulation in contexts like almond pollination. He notes that in the UK, natural pollen (e.g., from oilseed rape) is usually available, making routine use of pollen substitute unnecessary. Edwards advises that if pollen substitute is used in North Wales, the optimal window is mid‑February. He then recounts the problems he observed in 2023 after feeding pollen substitute: premature bee activity leading to dysentery inside the hive, a rapid depletion of carbohydrate stores requiring additional feeding, and the financial waste of feeding protein when natural pollen is forthcoming. He argues that the risks outweigh the benefits for most UK beekeepers and states that he has stopped using pollen substitute altogether. The video ends with a call for viewers to share their opinions and to like/subscribe.
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I am so, so glad I didn't do this to my bees in 2023. What we're talking about today is pollen substitute. Now I see so many people using pollen substitute, and I'm not here to say whether it's good or bad or right or wrong. All I'm saying is I am so, so glad I didn't use pollen sub on my bees in 2023. So pollen substitute is great, gives bees a source of protein when they don't need it, when you get this weird temperature overlap, which means The bees are active, they're trying to expand their brood nest, and there's not natural pollen available. So in the UK, very, very rare to get that. You don't often get this overlap period where it's 20 degrees outside and there's no pollen available. Generally pollen for the bees all the way throughout the year. So the benefit of feeding the bees Pollen Sub when you get this overlap is that the bees can build up. You're stimulating that queen to go and lay, to build a colony up. Maybe to target an early flow. And when used correctly and when used in the right environment, it's really good, it's really powerful. There's no way that people could do almond pollination, at least in my experience, without building their colonies up nice and early, getting them to a point where they're strong to target that unnaturally early almond flow. That's the reason they do it, and it works very well. However, in the UK, the only thing that you're really going to be building up for is the oilseed rape. And my personal view is that the oilseed rape is what you can use to build your colonies up for the better later spring and summer flows. But let's rewind a little bit. My advice to people, if you are using pollen sub, for me in North Wales, is to go at it kind of middle of Feb. That's generally a rough guide in the UK where it would become a useful tool. I never use pollen sub anymore. 2023 is the year that I'm vindicated with that decision. So let's cycle it back a bit. If If you'd have used Pollen Sub on your bees on the 15th of Feb, the bees would have said, great, I've got additional pollen coming in, therefore we're going to build up that colony. Fast forward, say, 3 weeks for the first round of brood, and it takes you to the first week of March. Fast forward again to the second round of brood, which is where you would be at the moment towards the back end of March, and you would have huge monster colonies, absolutely ginormous colonies. We had 12 inches of snow last You're building up the bees with that protein. They need to get out of their hives to defecate. They're just not the same as a winter bee where they can keep it in, they can hold it in. Soon as you get them to the point where you're making them active, unnaturally active as well, they need to get out of the hive. So there's your first issue, is that you're going to have dysentery inside. The bees are not going to be able to keep that in, and you're going to get it all over the frames, potentially a disease spreader. Definitely not something that I'd like to clean up. But then the next big problem that you've got is that you're almost certainly going to run out of carbohydrates. If you feed them protein, you need to complement it with carbohydrates. You're boosting them to get them strong, so then you're going to have to start feeding the bees for no real benefit. Like, there's nothing early to target here. You're wasting money on pollen substitute because maybe people think it's good to give the bees everything that they need. My experience in the UK is that the bees bring in enough protein late on in the season to easily see them through. We get such changeable winters at the moment that if you do get an early spring, then there's enough available pollen, natural pollen, for the bees to go out and build up at a suitable rate of knots. Otherwise, you might find yourself in a position where you're under 12 inches of snow and you're 2 weeks into stimulative pollen sub feeding. Not somewhere that I ever, ever want to be. So what do you think? Do you like pollen sub? Do you use it? Do you not use it? Stick it in the comments if you disagree, but if you enjoyed the video, please give it the thumbs up, hit the subscribe button. We've got plenty more content coming up on our YouTube channel.
