Pollen, January 2016

An extremely mild January, the bees were flying on several days. Two pollen samples were collected from the debris tray, and four from flowers and shrubs in the garden: Crocus, Hellibore, Quince and Viburnum.

Debris tray samples

There were two samples, one grey and one orange. A slip in the preparation of the slides caused the loss of most of the grey sample. Fig. 1 shows a photo taken before mounting, and fig. 2 is an image after mounting.



Fig. 1 Grey sample from debris tray, at 1000x
magnification,
 after washing in propanol, but before mounting.

Fig 2. As  Fig 1., after mounting.

 

The orange sample produced some clearer images:

Fig 3 Orange sample,
 magnification 400x.

Fig 4. Orange sample,
magnification 1000x

Samples from flowers and shrubs

The quince sample (figs. 5 and 6) shows a good match to the orange debris tray sample (figs 3 and 4).

Fig 5: Quince pollen, 1000x.

 

Fig 6. Quince pollen, 400x

Fig 7. Crocus pollen, 400x

 

Fig 8. Crocus pollen, 1000x

 



Fig 9. Viburnem pollen, 1000x



 



Fig 10. Hellibore pollen, 1000x