BBKA Forum

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

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.

Currently bees are finding no pollen in my area...snowdrops excepted.
Feeding pollen substituent.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

Ivy pollen is yellowish and smells a bit.
Unless you have a lot of evening primrose around.