Pollen Trap

Last month, I got a call from my grandma saying that my great Uncle Al had some beekeeping equipment that he was willing to sell me. Naturally, I took the deal and went to my grandparents’ house over the weekend to collect the equipment. When I saw the whole thing, I realized that it was huge. There were fifty-three things for me to collect! I won’t list them all, but among them was a bottom board with a built-in pollen trap. Below are pics of the bottom board.

I just did some research on pollen traps and this is what I found. Pollen traps are for trapping pollen (obviously) to collect. There are many models of pollen traps, including the one I mentioned. Beekeepers use pollen traps to collect pollen for making pollen paddies (an alternative meal to sugar syrup) or selling. For this style of pollen trap, there’s a wood plank that slides in and out of the trap. When it’s covered in pollen, you slide it out, collect the pollen into a container, and slide the plank back in (make sure you’ve put it back in straight). It’s pretty simple when you think about it.

Here is a link to a website that I learned most about pollen traps. You can look at it for more details. I hope that once I get my new hive colony, I’ll use this bottom board to keep it extra clean and have some more bee stuff to sell.