The Bee Bench › Pollen Patty Scaler

🥞 Pollen Patty Scaler

Mixing protein sub for a yard means scaling a recipe that was written for one hive. Set the patty size and the hive count and it does the arithmetic.

Hives

Patties per hive

Patty weight (lb)

Dry protein sub, % by weight

Ultra Bee, Bee-Pro, MegaBee, AP23 or your own mix. Higher makes a firmer, more protein-dense patty; lower makes it softer and sweeter so they take it faster.

Real pollen added, % of the dry portion

Even 5 to 10% real trapped pollen makes a substitute far more attractive. Use only pollen from your own healthy colonies — bought pollen has moved brood disease between yards more than once.

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of finished patty mix

The mix

Ingredient	Weight	Notes

Making them. Mix the dry ingredients first, then work the syrup in a little at a time until it comes together like stiff cookie dough — it should hold a shape without slumping or crumbling. Press into patties between two sheets of wax paper, about ⅜ inch thick, and stack them with the paper still on. They keep for months in the freezer.

Putting them on. Straight on the top bars over the cluster, wax paper and all, with a slit cut across the top. They chew through the paper and it keeps the patty from drying out. Right over the brood nest, not off in a corner — they will not travel far for it in cold weather.

Timing matters more than the recipe. Protein feeding is for late winter and early spring, to get brood rearing going before there's real pollen coming in, and again in late summer if the dearth has been hard on them. Feeding protein in the middle of an autumn small-hive-beetle problem is asking for trouble — beetles breed in patties. If you have beetles, feed small patties and check them weekly.