Guilfordbeekeepers.org

I have worked with two students recently doing projects on honey bees. Both found info on the web somewhere that stated that a typical honey bee colony will collect between 60 and 120 pound of pollen in a given year. I have never heard an amount stated by anyone I thought might have accurated info, but this sounds like a very high number to me. Heck, the sum total of all the weight of all the bees living in a hive in a 12 month period would not seem to be that much. Does anyone have a number that they feel is accurate for the amount of pollen that a colony would collect.

Beemanjack.

It has been estimated that a hive might use 40 to 70 pounds of pollen a year and those who collect pollen in something called pollen traps can attest to the fact that bees bring in large amounts of pollen.

http://www.beeclass.com/dts/pollen-honey.htm

"Pollen harvests of 25 to 30 kg in a season were recorded for honey bee colonies in France, with occasional daily collections by populous colonies of 2 kg (Louveaux, 1959). Harvests of 51 and 55 kg in successive years were recorded for a colony in California (Eckert, 1942)."

The Hive and the Honey Bee, Revised Edition 1992, Eighth Printing 2008. p. 426

[1 kg = 2.2 lbs]

It noted that research on pollen in relation to beekeeping has been limited.