what to do with pollen frames.

[pistolpete]

One of my colonies is doing poorly, only a softball sized cluster left.  So I busted them down to one box.  The bottom box had several frames full of pollen.  Looks like they ate off the honey that usually covers the pollen.  If I stick these frames into the third feeder box I have on other hives, will they get cleaned out? 

[riverbee]

pete, sometimes the bees don't always plug honey over the pollen, but it's possible they did utiliize the honey.  bees won't move pollen from a third deep.  if it were me, i would leave them in, or utilize them in another deep/nuc when you do your divides.

[apisbees]

What river said . Bees like the pollen to be next to the brood area. save it for when making up nucs. you will be pulling pollen brood frames out of your colonies to put into nucs so you can put them into the open brood areaof the colonies.

[Jen]

Hi Pete    Here's my side of the story. I posted a question similar to this last summer. My hives were getting pollen bound.. tons of it! I was running out of frames with pulled wax to use in hives where the queen needed more room to lay. Got on forum and asked what to do because the bees were not removing the surplus pollen to give queen laying room. In my opinion, bees need to be busy foraging and we here in the California drought weren't producing enough nectar. So the bees just kept piling in pollen.

I don't know where that thread is, but we ended it with Apis suggesting contaminating the frames of pollen with sprayed on water, get them drippy with water. This way the bees would feel the urge to remove it from the cells. So, I did just that and put them into the empty side of my nuc (a ten frame med). I went back in a week and the bees were taking the pollen out of the cells but not very quickly. I was excited. So I took the frames out and spray them with diluted vinegar water and returned them to the hive. The next week the frames were much more clean.

Don't know if this will help you, but it was a good solution to getting my pulled wax frames back 

[Zweefer]

I know this is a super old / dead thread, but as it came up on a search for pollen bound frames, I figured I would provide the link to the other thread Jen was referencing...
Here is the thread, starting with reply #2