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  • What pollen are your bees bring back

  • Bee's Need Flowers...… whats more to say?
Bee's Need Flowers...… whats more to say?
 #1940  by Chrisbarlow
 15 Feb 2019, 21:42
Having watched a few bees yesterday coming and going from the hive, there were two colours of pollen coming in. yellow and orange.

I think the yellow might be willow and the orange might be alder
 #1947  by Chrisbarlow
 16 Feb 2019, 18:56
popped to another apiary this morning and had a walk round the woodland where it is based. It was nice to see hazel catkins on quite a few trees in the area, which bees apparently work, although there was no bees on the hazel catkins I saw.
 #1956  by MickBBKA
 17 Feb 2019, 03:26
My home apiary is bringing in huge amounts of pollen at the moment.
As I am now doing the Microscopy course I am having great fun collating and collecting pollen samples from both plants and bees.
At the present time my bees are collecting Hazel, Crocus, Snowdrop and strangely both a mixture of Ivy which is still in flower and Heather which there is masses of as a garden border plant in my area.
I have no idea what my out apiaries are doing but I have pollen sub on them just in case they need it as the temps can vary quite a lot from here to there.
 #1957  by MickBBKA
 17 Feb 2019, 03:29
Chrisbarlow wrote:
16 Feb 2019, 18:56
popped to another apiary this morning and had a walk round the woodland where it is based. It was nice to see hazel catkins on quite a few trees in the area, which bees apparently work, although there was no bees on the hazel catkins I saw.
I have never seen a bee on a catkin and there are loads of Hazel trees around me but they are bringing it in and some look like they have been on the Rape field..LOL
 #1962  by Chrisbarlow
 17 Feb 2019, 07:26
I know what you mean about yellow pollen, there was loads coming in.

I'm not that far away from Nigel and I am also putting pollen subs on which are being eaten but with my bees they are bringing pollen in.

I did a bit more googling after the post and apparently hazel pollen is a greeny yellow colour and difficult for bees to collect for whatever reason.
 #2507  by Chrisbarlow
 28 Mar 2019, 21:19
watching the bees this morning , the activity in the apiary was impressive and the amount of pollen that is coming back is staggering, all very yellow, assuming willow. To think this time last year we had the beast from the east
 #2524  by DianeBees
 30 Mar 2019, 08:45
There's definitely some dandelion pollen in mine. I could smell it. reminded me of when I picked a lot of dandelion heads to make wine. :)

Mostly yellow that I could see.
 #5033  by Patrick
 16 Oct 2019, 16:58
Loads of Ivy pollen coming in at the moment. Bees taking advantage of every hour of sunshine. Being in an area of floodplain I have always particularly valued willows for early pollen.

I do wonder if I have overlooked the role of alders however. Anybody else get a significant spring boost from it?