While we normally think of honey bees collecting nectar, an average-size hive may bring in 100 pounds of pollen in a season. Pollen is an essential part of the honey bee diet, providing a wide range of nutrients including protein, carbohydrates, lipids, vitamins, and minerals.
Although a tough outer coating protects the pollen from environmental stressors, honey bees have enzymes in their digestive tract that split the grains apart at a weak point. The interior is then digested and the empty husks are excreted. Most of the pollen is eaten by nurse bees. They use the nutrition absorbed from it to secrete royal jelly from their hypopharyngeal glands. The jelly is fed to young larvae, including workers, drones and queens. After about three days the jelly is mixed with bee bread—a mixture of whole pollen, honey, and enzymes—and fed to the workers and drones until they spin their cocoons. The queens receive a steady diet of royal jelly throughout their development.
Most bees collect just pollen or just nectar on any trip, but a few carry both at the same time. The pollen is stuffed into hairy receptacles on their hind legs called corbiculae. A single bee can carry about half her own body weight in pollen.
Once back at the hive, the workers stuff the pollen into an awaiting cell. Unlike nectar-carrying bees, pollen-carrying bees have to off-load it themselves. In addition to depositing the pellets from their sacks, they may also groom away any pollen that is stuck to their bodies. The pollen is stored in cells at the perimeter of the brood nest, forming a ring around it. During the brood rearing season, the pollen is stored for only a few days. During the winter it is stored for much longer.
Honey bees usually forage on only one kind of flower on any single trip. This is nature’s way of assuring that plants are cross-pollinated. So a bee going to blackberries, keeps going to blackberries until there are no more blackberry flowers, then she will switch to something else. Honey bees collect pollen even from plants that don’t provide nectar, such as corn. In corn-growing regions, pesticide-contaminated corn pollen is suspected of causing severe health problems within the hive.
Rusty
hi Rusty, this is Liesl’s husband. she told me about your bee blog and i decided to check it out…Very cool! I think i have learned more about bees in the last 10 minutes than in my entire life so far. Liesl and I have been talking about maybe starting up a bee hive in the future, so i am sure when that time comes we will want your expertise. I was a little confused about something in the Pollen collection article. You said that “bees forage on only one kind of flower on a single trip. This is nature’s way of assuring plants are cross-pollinated.” is that correct? to me it would make sense that if they only gathered pollen from ONE flower type that they would NOT be cross-pollinating.
Anyway, I look forward to reading more about these bees and i am going to start right now.
thanks
Cody
Hey Cody,
Thanks so much for your comments. I would love to help you and Liesl set up a colony of bees anytime you’re ready.
This is really silly, but I just wrote a long answer to your question and it disappeared. Drats! I can’t figure out where it went, so I’ll just have to start again.
I think the term “cross pollination” is the thing that is confusing you. The “cross” part refers to pollination between flowers of the same species, instead of pollination within an individual.
If you shook one flower, and the pollen dropped from the anther (male part) onto the stigma (female part) that would be self pollination. It usually doesn’t produce seed or a fruit.
Cross pollination happens when the pollen from one flower is transferred to the stigma of a totally different flower on a separate plant. The flower has to be of the same species, but it’s a different individual. So, for example, when pumpkin pollen lands on a different pumpkin flower, it will fertilize and make a seed, but if the pumpkin pollen lands in the flower where it came from or on a kiwi flower, for example, nothing happens.
So if a bee went from a maple, to a cherry, to a dandelion, to a mint, to a cucumber, nothing would ever get pollinated because they are all different species (just like a dog can’t “pollinate” a cat.) But if the bee goes from one pumpkin plant, to another pumpkin plant, to another, you will get pumpkins on all of them. Very cool. Anyway, that is what is meant by cross pollination.
If you’re still confused, I’ll try again.
Rusty
[...] Pollen is the primary protein source for these animals and it is critical for their health, growth, and development. In honey bees the pollen is first digested by the nurse bees and then fed as glandular secretions to the larvae. In mason bees, the pollen is left in the form of a provision which is eaten directly by the larvae as it grows. In either case, if that pollen is carrying pesticides, the larvae may die. Or—and this is harder to determine—the larvae may grow into adults that have abnormalities. These abnormalities may be morphological, behavioral, or reproductive. Any of these could cause the young bees to die or be unable to reproduce. [...]
[...] Have you had your pesticide today? When I was first introduced to the study of insecticides in agriculture there was a clear delineation between the systemic kind and the contact kind. Most pesticides work by poisoning the target organism when it touches or ingests the poison—that much is pretty much the same in either case. But the big difference is that a contact poison remains on the surface of the plant, and the systemic kind is absorbed by the plant and moves through the vascular system to all its parts, including leaves, roots, stems, flowers, and even the pollen. [...]
[...] collecting behavior of honey bees The amount of pollen brought back to a hive seems to depend on two things: the presence of brood in the hive and a [...]