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Wally or Kurt,

I have a unique situation that I have never seen. In fact I have never seen this much pollen in a hive before in my life.

I have a question on hive configuration. I have a hive that is two deeps, with two medium supers. I had planned on splitting this hive and giving each deep a super for winter. Plans changed when I found the bottom deep had no brood in it at all, but was wall to wall pollen. So I chose to leave it be and not split. My question is fairly simple, yet three part.

Do I
a. put the pollen filled deep on top of the brood nest

b. put the pollen fille deep on the bottom of the brood nest

c. or checker board the two deeps together.


And do I put the super on with or without a queen excluder for the winter.

Bees do tend to over collect pollen at times. If this were the spring, the bees would consume the pollen in a short time. Since minimal brood rearing should be going on during the summer, this pollen will most likely not be consumed.
If this brood box is left, there is a good chance that it will attract wax moths since it is not likely heavily patrolled by the bees.
The bees probably have all the pollen they need in the upper brood chamber.
I would consider adding a few frames of pollen to the outside of the brood area. No more than 2. THe rest could be distributed among other hives or frozen until needed. THe bees still may reject this pollen later on.
Do not leave your QE on going in the winter.

Kurt

Kurt,

Here is a follow-up question to Ron's.
I have two hives of Russians. Both have two deeps and I have recently (two weeks ago added a medium super with foundation to each. Both seem to be doing well, but one is not doing as well as the other. Lets call the "slower" hive #1. Hive #2 has 8 or 9 full frames (about 80 to 90 pounds) of honey stored in the top deep. Hive #1 has about 3 frames of honeyin the top deep.
There is active but slowing brood rearing in both hives in both deeps. I have been feeding both hives 1 to 1 syrup. However since I was seeing honey being stored, I have only been feeding about every third day.
Hive #1 is now finishing the gallon of syrup in less than a day, and has this same massive store of pollen.
I have already started feeding hive #1 every day (1 gallon of syrup). Should I remove some of the pollen?
Should I put it in Hive #2?
Should I just chalk this up to different hive "personalities" and let them eat all they want and forget it?

It would seem that both hives must be doing pretty well.
If the slower hive is taking " every day (1 gallon of syrup)." then I can't imagine what hive #2 is doing.
Normally I would not be concrned about too much pollen. They will consume as they need it. My biggest fear would be if it were unprotected pollen that the wax worms could consume.
Normally Russians are very good to cut off brood rearing in the times of dearth, so less brood this time of year is nomal.

Kurt