Pollen id

[blackcavebees]

Bees bringing in loads pollen last couple of days, thankfully spring has finally arrived in the north westerly reaches of the kingdom ....

A couple of bees were coming in looking like they had been sprayed with a yellow marker paint! All over heads, thorax (front 70% of bee) covered in yellow. Ive heard about this in Autumn with HB but it ws grey. Any ideas what it is?

Sorry no batts in camera

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Sounds like willow to me - they really get into it!

 

[Snail368]

Willow pollen is more usually a yellow colour. I would suggest that you see the pollen guide on the Bristol Beekeepers website. They have a good guide for pollen colour on their website.

Grey could be elder or hazel pollen according to their website.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Willow pollen is more usually a yellow colour. /QUOTE]

A couple of bees were coming in looking like they had been sprayed with a yellow marker paint! All over heads, thorax (front 70% of bee) covered in yellow.

Grey could be elder or hazel pollen according to their website.

Ive heard about this in Autumn with HB but it ws grey. Any ideas what it is?

Sorry no batts in camera

We ARE talking yellow, snail

 

[Swarm]

It's Willow, bees practically covered in bright yellow pollen.

 

[pargyle]

Willow pollen is more usually a yellow colour. /QUOTE]

We ARE talking yellow, snail

Do try to keep up Snail ...

 

[beeno]

Hi all,
Someone suggested oil seed rape. So, where are you MM and other OSR watchers. Some of mine are covered too, but funnily enough some have none in their pollen baskets! Must be going for the nectar then?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Hi all,
Someone suggested oil seed rape.

According to 'A Colour guide to pollen loads of the honey bee' (which I bought in the convention this year ) OSR pollen is more of a dull beige/light khaki colour

 

[masterBK]

Yesterday watched bees getting covered in yellow pollen working the Dandelions on the grass verges. Stick some under microscope as the pollen grains Of Taraxacum have a very characteristic shape .

 

[Floyd]

This is a far more concise interactive pollen chart that the one available on Bristol website. Even has the option for toggling on/off the various season.

http://www.sheffieldbeekeepers.org.uk/tools/pollen-chart/

On a slightly different note, do bees use Gorse as my area is coverred with acres of the stuff, however the bees dont seem to use it?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

On a slightly different note, do bees use Gorse as my area is coverred with acres of the stuff, however the bees dont seem to use it?

They will but not if they can get anything else according to Dr Howse

 

[Elaine]

We have loads of gorse around us - and I think thatis what they have been living on until now - but I think they consider it 'second class'

 

[MJBee]

Mine are returning covered in yellow pollen from Broom - gorse and willow finished and no OSR within 5 miles

 

[enrico]

This is a far more concise interactive pollen chart that the one available on Bristol website. Even has the option for toggling on/off the various season.

http://www.sheffieldbeekeepers.org.uk/tools/pollen-chart/

On a slightly different note, do bees use Gorse as my area is coverred with acres of the stuff, however the bees dont seem to use it?

They don't look right on my ipad, there's a district lack of yellow, too much orange and red!
E

 

[beeno]

According to 'A Colour guide to pollen loads of the honey bee' (which I bought in the convention this year ) OSR pollen is more of a dull beige/light khaki colour

Hi Jenkins,
Would you like to double check that please as Bristol and others say yellow. Someone must live next to an OSR field please go and check! Empirical evidence much more reliable than from some academic who does not even know what a rape field is!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Hi Jenkins,
Would you like to double check that please as Bristol and others say yellow. Someone must live next to an OSR field please go and check! Empirical evidence much more reliable than from some academic who does not even know what a rape field is!

Published by IBRA in conjunction with the school of life sciences, Keele Uniersity And North Staffordshire University
'All the colours in this chart were obtained by matching pollen to colours in bright indirect sunlight, such as is found at a North facing window.........Colours were recorded by removing pollen loads from honey bees (apis mellifera) caught foraging at flowers, and then matching the colour of the fresh pollen loads by eye to the most similar colour in a reference colour chart'........... the colours were recorded as CMYK screens tint percentages, as used by printers for the four-colour printing process.
Dr Kirk has painstakingly collected pollen loads from bees from Britain and Germany.
William Kirk is a senior lecturer in ecology and entomology at Keele university. He keeps bees and conducts research on bee behaviour and pollination.'

You were right Beeno - knows Bugger all about bees or pollen

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

,
Would you like to double check that please as Bristol and others say yellow.

BTW - I have found Bristol's website sadly lacking on more than one occasion (and no, I'm not colour blind - the Maritime and coastguard agency frown on that kind of thing - Ishihara test every two years and had to pass the 'lantern test' )

 

[beeno]

Hi Jenkins,
Many thanks for that. Not only Bristol though! Bee keepers being wrong difficult to believe? I was not insinuating that you were colour blind. Many trades involved in producing charts etc. mistakes can easily happen, but it is sad when it is being reproduced by others. In the meantime I am off to the nearest rape field wherever that might be. Got lots of khaki pollen going in! If I ever get to Cornwall I was going to ask the coast guard guys to help me pick a little boat and educate me on the local sea conditions before I set off. Would they do that? I don't want to be one of those idiots rescued on TV who set off without enough petrol!

 

[DanBee]

They don't look right on my ipad, there's a district lack of yellow, too much orange and red!
E

I know I keep banging on about this, but looking at a website colour chart on a screen is fraught with problems. How do I know this? Learning the hard way that RGB values on my screen do not match the thousands of printed items that have arrived. I've learnt to describe colour in Pantone or RAL reference codes - calibrated systems with calibrated formula guides (reference cards) that are cheaply and widely available.

Tilt your screen or move your head and the colours will appear to change. Worse, print it for a handy field reference and you're then into a whole 'nother layer of tinting and colour reproduction issues. It's all down to colour calibration of your screen/printer, and the screen of the person who put the colours up on the website. Errors are cumulative at both ends.

Instead, William Kirk's Colour Guide to the Pollen Loads of the Honeybee was professionally produced with William spending a large amount of time with the printers checking and re-checking colour reproduction.

It's £12.50 direct from IBRA or other booksellers. If that's too steep for you, a laminated pack of the most common pollen colours has been produced by William/IBRA at £4. This is much better than the other "pocket reference" card that I have seen, which suffers from inconsistent colour reproduction.

 

[GrumpyBunny]

http://www.****************-17-w.asp - a little bit simpler but you're not going to get an accurate colour representation on a computer.