Brood cappings from an established colony are generally a mixture of wax and chewed out cocoons. But when a colony is starting off there are no cocoons, so they use pollen. The first brood cappings will be somewhere between white and slightly yellow. The next turnover will be slightly brown. A well established colony will have very dark brown cappings because they will be almost exclusively wax and cocoons and almost no pollen. The reason for mixing in pollen or cocoons is that they have to breath. Larvae and pupae need oxygen as Huber proved 200 years ago. He also proved that they mixed in pollen at first and cocoons later...
I saw this frenzy going on and turned the cover over to block the entrance. They were doing this same thing before I blocked it. They would pile up until they would fall in clumps. I slowed it down to try to see it better.
I consider propolizing a good trait for bees (maybe not for the beekeeper). Here is a mating nuc I found this year. The drilled hole is about 5/8". The reduced hole is about 5/16".
It wasn't working right and then it would and then it wouldn't. This is what I found. It couldn't get out, so I left it and used another smoker. It was finally out after two days.
We needed to feed because of a dearth and we still needed to finish building up the 8 frame nucs for winter. We bought 50 six gallon buckets and bought 3,450 pounds of sugar in 25 lb bags. We worked out the maximum strength we could do with hot water from my tap (140 F) and not have it crystallize out. We put one 25 pound bag in each bucket with a heaping tablespoon of ascorbic acid, then 18 pints of water and stir it with a five gallon paint stirrer. After 10 to 30 minutes we stir it again.
