I have prepared slides of pollen sample collected from honey bee corbicular load, but it looks the pollen grains are of different size, create confusing. Is it possible to get such like that?
Hello Rakesh; I am thinking about my observations of honey bee foraging behavior. I regularly see individuals visiting more than one species of plant. I would be surprised if bees' pollen pellets contain only one species of pollen. You might want to watch the foraging behavior of the bees you are sampling to determine if they visit more than one species of plant during a single foraging trip.
Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers
I agree with James Des Lauriers points, that it is common for bees to visit different genera and different species with a genus. However, there are variations in the pollen grain size of all species-specific pollen grains. All grain sizes hover around a mean value but there are variations to this mean, it is not a big variation but variation nonetheless.
Thank you James Des Lauriers sir for your comment. Honey bee individuals may visit different plant species in day, but for a single trip they strictly visit only one plant species particularly for pollen collection. In our experiment of determining pollen foraging source from corbicular pollen load, we found only one type of plant species from the single individual (1 pair load) till date. But surprisingly sometimes I found different sizes and shapes of pollen grains in a single prepared slide (from 1 pair load) and frequently confuse to identification.
Thank you Carl Alexander Frisk sir for your comment. But is it possible to get such variation. Generally the anthers dehisce occur after getting the pollen maturity, so the mature pollen may be of uniform. So how this variation? Please refers....
Thank you.
Rakesh Das Have a look at the following publication by Yang et al. (2018), see attached document. In it they explore the varying pollen morphology both within genera and within species of each genera. For example, the genus Brassica, which is a common honey bee food-source, show large variation in pollen size both within species and within genus.
Article Pollen morphology of selected crop plants from southern Chin...
Rakesh Das
You are right, for a single trip pollen collecting honeybees strictly visit only one plant species. However, when the field available pollen sources are very limited they may visit, and collect different flower species pollen during a single trip. In these rare cases the collected pollen loads are typically small. Visiting more than one flower species during a single trip is more common for nectar colleting bees. The attached photos demonstrate a typical one species pollen load (Sinapis alba, two photos) and a nectar collecting honeybee forehead carries avocado pollen between the antennas, and Isatis lusitanica (Brassicaceae) pollen above both antennas.
Rakesh Das
Here is a photo from my research, of honeybee mix species' pollen load. It was taken at May end, the end of spring bloom in Israel. According to Davis (1991) this is example of the rare type "honeybee mingled loads".
Thank you Carl Alexander Frisk sir for your refer and also for the document.
I wasn't aware bees foraged on one species per trip, but I hadn't watched them in such detail. A few other thoughts occurred to me:
You are assuming that the bees are able to unload every single pollen grain that they collect, leaving absolutely no grains inside the pollen sacs between trips. Unless it was the first foraging trip by the bee ever, I would expect to see a few different pollen grains, especially if sampled later in the day.
- Are you are using clean/fresh equipment between bees, not reusing the same pair of tweezers or whatever you extract pollen with?)
Considering how often you find a piece of food stuck in your teeth hours after your last meal (or is that just me?), is it realistic to think the pollen is completely emptied every time? I don't know the process by which they do it or the equivalent scale to humans:
- Given the large range of sizes of pollen, what is the human equivalent? i.e. a human hand holding a grape or an apple or a melon?
- Do bees just squeeze the pollen sacs or do they have an appendage to scrape the pollen out?
- How variable is the pollen size? You might be looking at a highly variable plant species, or mature/immature pollen (unlikely as it is usually only released when mature), or perhaps hydrated vs dehydrated?
Assuming a single species and a single size class seems to be simplifying things a bit too much. I would suggest investigating the plant species your bees are foraging on in more detail.
Matthew Wheal,
very good questions.
Honeybees clean themselves during the collecting flight, and have a better cleaning while emptying inside the hive. However, few pollen grains may remain on their body, and some plant species even use it as a through-hive pollination method.
While collecting nectar from female-stage flowers the honeybee body and its pollen sacks are clean, or almost clean (see picture).
While collecting pollen the pollen load may contain only one pollen grain species, and may present a very few another pollen grain species (see pictures).
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Data Mining
- Classification