… despite its complexity, bees cannot live on honey alone. While the sugars in honey supply their energy needs, in addition they require protein, minerals and trace elements. Pollen is the source of these but like all things dietary – bees need variety as well as quantity.

Importance of Pollen

The protein content of the pollen of different plants is variable but generally very high, containing amounts comparable with peas and beans (Witherell), or seeds and peanuts (Dietz).

Protein is important because it is the building material for growth and tissue repair. As a measure of the importance of the protein in pollen, it has been shown that the amount available to a colony influences the size of the emerging brood. In fact it has been calculated that the amount of pollen required to rear a bee – from the hatching of the egg to the emergence of the adult – is between 120 and 145mg.

But it doesn’t stop there because bees continue to grow after emergence. On average, emerging bees contain 13% protein (Witherell) but by the time they are 5 days old, the heads, thoraces and abdomens of young bees contain 93%, 38%,76%, more protein respectively than those of the newly emerged (Dietz). This huge increase is brought about by a massive consumption of pollen which is initiated within a very short time of emergence, perhaps as little as two hours, and rises to a peak at about 5-9 days old before gradually diminishing and eventually tailing off at 15-18 days (Dietz).

However not all this protein intake is used in growth of the bee or development of the hypopharyngeal glands because it is on about the 3^rd day after emergence that the bees are directly employed in brood rearing, an activity that continues up until about the 13^th day (Gary) and involves the passing on of pollen-derived protein to larvae in bee milk.

During brood rearing, a nurse bee needs to digest about 10mg of pollen to produce 4mg of protein per day in brood food which is produced in the hypopharyngeal glands. The more protein that is available to the nurse bees either by concentration in, or sheer bulk of, pollen the more larvae a bee is able to feed.

Principal constituents of pollen…

In addition to protein and lipids (fats) pollen contains:

• free amino acids;
• carbohydrates (sugars, starch and cellulose);
• minerals (calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, sodium, potassium, aluminium, manganese, sulphur and copper);
• vitamins – pantothenic acid, nicotinic acid, thiamine, riboflavin, ascorbic acid and small amounts of vitamins D and E;
• enzymes and coenzymes;
• pigments xanthophyll and carotene;
• sterols (Witherell).

Because these ingredients are so variable between different pollens, it is thought that bees need a good mixture of pollens to be sure they are having a balanced diet.

Minerals and Trace Elements

Who knows what minerals and trace elements are now missing from the bees’ diets as a result of the decline in wild flowers and wild flower species.

We humans know the importance of a balanced diet with lots of variety to cover the full spectrum of our dietary requirements. Peculiar conditions like ricketts or scurvy can arise when small amounts of vital vitamins or nutrients are missing. Malnutrition also affects the immune system.

The likely effects of a shortage of pollen in late summer and autumn are…

…that the amount of pollen the bees manage to store will be insufficient to take them through to April and the start of the season proper. The significance of this is that the queen perks up and starts to lay, albeit at a slow rate, very early in the spring and long before fresh pollen becomes available in any sort of quantity. At this time nurse bees need to increase their pollen intake to kick-start their hypopharygeal glands so that they will be able to feed the emerging brood. If the required pollen is not there, it could mean that the colony will be unable to feed the larvae properly resulting in small bees and a possible late start into the season.

The bottom line of all this could be a reduction in colony strength especially if spring, and summer for that matter, are delayed, poor or cancelled altogether. A late start to the season could also mean them failing to make the most of the early flows such as dandelion. More generally it could leave the colony weakened and vulnerable to all of the assorted brutalities of nature.

This situation arose in the spring of 2013 which became very cold and continued forever. The effects of this were made worse because it followed the miserable autumn of 2012 where the bees failed to work the ivy to any significant extent. And of course the autumn of 2012 followed the most disastrous summer for beekeeping in history with record breaking queen failure because of the atrocious, striped weather. But don’t get me started.

It is advisable to keep a stock of pollen supplement or substitute for situations such as this. In that terrible spring it was impossible to buy supplement or substitute because of course everybody was in the same boat.

Some important sources of pollen…

… in this locality important sources of pollen include:-  Gorse, Hazel, Willow, Dandelion, Oilseed rape, Hawthorn, Apple, Sycamore, Horse chestnut, Clover, Raspberry, Lime, Blackberry, Thistles, Ragwort, Knapweed, Native Ling and Bell heathers, Ivy.

Reseeding

In addition are the many native wild flowers too numerous to list which are commonly known as ‘weeds’. These used to be common and widespread in agricultural pastures but unfortunately these species-rich meadows are rapidly being ploughed up and replaced with single species grasslands. To pollinating insects, these ‘improved grasslands’ are wilderness areas.  Clovers are being encouraged as a forage crop and soil improver but the cultivars popular with farmers tend to be large plants bred for rapid biomass accumulation and nitrogen fixing. The bees don’t seem to like them perhaps because the flowers are so big the bees tongues cannot reach the appropriate part but who knows when, or even if, these plants secrete nectar at all.

Scrub

The grubbing out of ‘scrub’, which includes important early spring pollen sources such as gorse, willow and hazel has further reduced availability locally meaning bees must fly further to forage leaving fewer bees to feed the brood. A shortage of nurse bees can lead to a chilled brood nest which can kill brood or lead to proliferation of brood diseases such as chalkbrood.

Hedgerows

Hedgerows of flowering trees such as hawthorn and blackthorn, blackberry, gorse and holly were once great pollen sources for pollinators. However, the relaxation of quotas and the mushrooming of intensive dairying has seen the removal from the landscape of thousands of miles of hedgerows. More have been decapitated and are ritually scalped year on year by tractors with flails so they can never flower.

Malnutrition and Disease

Anyone who has read Roger Patterson’s excellent article on Chalkbrood cannot but be suspicious of the possibility of malnutrition in the upsurge in chalkbrood. Here’s an exerpt:

“I will give details of one of my colonies (called “Rampion”) in 2013 that was a very cold wet spring, following a poor summer and winter. At inspections there was bad chalk brood and on 1st May I made a note to requeen the colony. It had built up very slowly. On 16th May the chalk brood was still bad with a covering on the floor, apart from one largely sealed comb that was very different from the rest. There wasn’t the “pepperpot” appearance of other combs and only a handful of infected cells. The obvious explanation is that this was a new comb, but it wasn’t, having been in the colony the previous year. I checked back and we had 3-4 days of good weather soon after that comb was laid up by the queen, so my thinking was the brood on that comb was fed better. An inspection on 7th June, after a spell of fine weather when the bees were doing very well, showed there was virtually no chalk brood in any of the combs. In this instance I think it showed the chalk brood was possibly caused by poor nutrition and was not genetic. In other respects the queen was good and I could have culled her when there was no need to. In the spring of 2013 chalk brood was bad in many colonies, so it would have been unreasonable to cull queens for that reason.”

Some serious research into the nutrition status of bees and other pollinators is needed urgently.

References and Bibliography

Dietz,A. Nutrition of the Adult Honey Bee. In The Hive and the Honey Bee. Ed. Dadant and Sons. Dadant Publications. Illinois. USA. 1979.

Gary,N.E. Activities and Behaviour or Honey Bees. In The Hive and the Honey Bee. Ed. Dadant and Sons. Dadant Publications. Illinois. USA. 1979.

Hooper,T. Guide to Bees and Honey. Blandford, London. 1991.

Witherell,P.C. Other Products of the Hive. In The Hive and the Honey Bee. Ed. Dadant and Sons. Dadant Publications. Illinois. USA. 1979.

 Click here for a gallery of pollen loads

Click here for Roger Patterson’s Chalk Brood article

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2022.  All Rights Reserved.

If you ask your local beekeeper, he or she is likely to tell you that it is meadowsweet. However, if you doggedly search the drifts of meadowsweet in your locale for a bee with full pollen baskets, you will see that the pollen they are carrying is actually a creamy yellow. See photo below:

A riddle then.

We all know that bees are very specialised in their foraging behaviour during the height of the season – ie they are recruited via excited waggle dancers to ‘go fetch’ a particular pollen or nectar and will go where they are directed and concentrate on that one crop. This strategy allows them to make the most of a resource when, where and if there is a proliferation – farmers permitting.

At the shoulders of the season though, when the main flows are over and forage is becoming thin on the ground – does that strategy continue to be sensible? Or is it wiser for bees to fuzzy the focus and become more generlist/opportunistic in their foraging behaviour.

We know that bees visit both crocuses and snowdrops in the spring when both are in bloom together but the pollen loads of both those flowers are brownish orange so we can’t really tell from the pollen loads just where those bees have been. Unless of course we have a microscope and a fixation.

To come back to the point though – what  is the source of the green pollen  loads? Is it a single source or could it be a mixture of two different coloured pollens from two different species? For example meadowsweet (yellow) and rosebay willowherb (blue).

Personally, I think it is a mixture of the yellow meadowsweet pollen and the blue rosebay willowherb pollen.

What do you think?

Click here  for August bee flowers

Click here for September bee flowers

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For us Celts it is also the first day of Spring but you Saxon Dogs will have to wait till March 20th!

For the bees though – read on:

There are a few hardy plants that flower in early spring but only the willow (Salix spp) can produce enough nectar for a small surplus and  only in a very warm spring.

Of course the Native bee will forage at lower temperatures and is better able to take advantage of what little fresh nectar and pollen is available.

Until today – I’ve never seen a bee on a dandelion and didn’t really believe they found them interesting but here’s the evidence they do and the pollen loads are yellow:

The table below shows some possible bee flowers for February. Green lines are Irish natives. Click it for a better view:

Click here for March Bee Flowers

Click here for April Bee Flowers

Click here for May Bee Flowers

Click here for June Bee Flowers

Click here for July Bee Flowers

Click here for August Bee Flowers

Click here for September Bee Flowers

Click here for October Bee Flowers

Click here for November Bee Flowers

Click here for more about Gorse

Click here for a general seasonal guide to important bee flowers

Click here for photos of pollen load colours

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2017.  All Rights Reserved.

From an ecological point of view there are at least 3 reasons:

• Honeybees have evolved in tandem with certain flowers and they have adapted to facilitate each other;
• One bee is able to rapidly communicate the location of a pollen/nectar source to the whole hive and an army sets out;
• The bees then concentrate faithfully on that flower species until the pollen runs out or the nectar dries up, at which point the job of pollination is accomplished.

These features obviously make the honey bee important from an agricultural/commercial point of view. In addition, hives of bees are mobile and can be moved from crop to crop – an arrangement which can suit bees, farmers and beekeepers so long as everyone has a bit of respect. Wouldn’t that be great?

But some detail:

Evolution

In the beginning there was the wind…

The earliest seed-bearing plants were randomly pollinated by wind-borne pollen which would be caught on droplets of a sticky exudation oozing from their ovules. Because of the hit and miss nature of this method of pollination massive amounts of pollen need to be produced in the hope that at least some of it will find its mark. This method is still used by conifers.

Then came the insects…

It is thought that eventually sap-sucking or resin-browsing insects were drawn to dine on the exudation. The effects of this were beneficial to both parties – the insects were introduced to pollen as a  new source of protein and as they moved around from plant to plant they carried pollen with them and pollinated as they went. Plants pollinated in this way needed to produce less pollen than those still relying on the wind. Insect pollination was also more efficient so these plants were able to produce more offspring and the trait persisted.

Co-evolution

As long as such associations are mutually beneficial, their continuance is at least assured and there may even be further co-evolution. Each step along the co-evolutionary pathway creates a more fruitful relationship although things are more prone to disaster.

Over-dependency

Occasionally a plant may devise an almost perfect method of manipulating an insect for pollination purposes but such cases are so complex they tend to involve a single species of insect. One of the best examples of this is the flower of the orchid Ophrys speculum which looks enough like the female of a certain bee species (not Apis mellifera) to entice pollen coated male bees to mate with it and thus pollinate it in a novel way. While this may be a highly successful method of pollination, the future of the orchid becomes tied in very closely to that of the bee; if the bee species should decline or even become extinct, perhaps due to habitat destruction or a surfeit of exhausted males, then the orchid will be doomed to follow.

Honey bee adaptations

The honey bee has not yet been so tightly hemmed in by co-evolution and they remain relatively broad spectrum pollinators. However they have evolved certain adaptations that suit them for their job such as tube-like mouthparts for reaching down into the throats of flowers in search of nectar and the hairy body which is the ideal surface to which pollen grains will easily cling. There are also pollen baskets but these are designed not for the passing on of pollen but to collect the bee’s share to take home to the hive.

Bee flower adaptations

Plants, for their part, have adapted their flowers to attract bees – all sorts of bees. They tend to have  brightly coloured petals, usually blue or yellow, with a landing platform of some sort. The petal markings may include honey guides which are designed to tell the bee where the nectar is. The nectaries are tucked away near the base of the corolla tube, where only the tube-like mouth-parts of a bee can reach and inaccessible to the chewing of beetles.

There are also cunning floral booby traps designed to manipulate the insect pollinators:

• Scotch broom – Cytisus scoparius  is spring-loaded to burst open when a bee lands, the curved stamens and stigma arching over the bee; the stamens to press pollen onto its back and the stigma hoping to pick up some suitable pollen placed there by another broom plant.
• Gorse (Ulex europaeus) is also spring loaded but in this case the stigma and stamens burst from the floor of the flower, hoisting the bee into the air. Here the target must be the bee’s belly.

• Rosemary officinalis is not sprung, but has stamen and stigma strategically arranged to arch out of the upper part of the flower in such a way as to brush the bee’s back.
• Himalayan balsam or Impatiens glandulifera has stamens situated above the entrance of the flower so as the bee pushes its way in – a streak of white pollen is plastered onto its thorax

• Meadow sage or Salvia pratensis has a carefully placed foot-plate which is hinged to the stamens, when the bee treads on the foot-plate the stamens swing down from the roof of the flower stamping pollen onto its back.  The stigma, meanwhile, extends from the upper lobe of the flower and lengthens with age so that bees entering an older flower brush against it on the way in so delivering the pollen. Presumably this age-related lengthening is a mechanism to avoid self pollination. Click this fabulous photo below for a close up of Salvia pratensis pollination in action – not mine and not a honey bee – all credits to Wikimedia.org

So a day in the life of a honeybee can be quite a circus, hoisted into the air one minute and thumped on the back the next.

Honey bee exclusion

Some flowers have evolved to exclude honeybees in favour of other insects.

A common method of exclusion is by having corolla tubes too deep for the bees’ elongated mouthparts and these are butterfly flowers. An example would be honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum).  Unimaginative though – don’t you think? How about weight activated trapdoors, ejector seats or that old favourite – a boxing glove on a spring.

However, exclusion can backfire. Some insects are clever enough to chew a hole into the corolla tube to access the nectaries bypassing the pollination step altogether. Honey bees will sometimes use these access holes too.

Another exclusion method is an open door policy. Primitive flowers such as composites (daisy-like flowers) are open to all and sundry. These are little visited by honeybees as they are not mixers by nature and dislike competition.

Wild carrot (Daucus carota) flowers are white composites but they sometimes have one small red flower in the centre (above).This is thought to attract flies who think the little red dot is another fly and flies are great mixers. Just look at horse muck!

Communication

The foraging force of any one hive may number 25 thousand and they will cover the area within a radius of 3 miles from the hive  in search of nectar and pollen. When they find a good source, they become very purposeful, they load up with pollen and/or nectar, then they go back home to the hive. Once home they will hand out samples of what they have found and dance enthusiastically to tell everyone where it came from – how far, how much and which direction. Bees that respond to the dance and go out and find the source are said to be ‘recruited’. For bees, this means they will go out after this species of flower until either they die or the source does. Communication means that a chance discovery by one bee will lead to thousands and thousands following on and obviously the more bees the quicker will be the pollination.

Good Youtube video on dancing bees here:

Fidelity

The fidelity bees show for a single species helps pollination in several different ways.

• Once they have been discovered by the bees, increasing numbers of bees are recruited to forage on that species moving from flower to flower depositing pollen as they go.
• They will continue to visit until either the nectar dries up or the weather changes. They make the most of spells of good weather.
• When the bees return to the hive they all tumble around together in the hive, passing pollen from bee to bee as they brush shoulders. This increases the likelihood of cross pollination as bees will then be carrying pollen from several individuals of the same species.
• Focussed attention means plants need not produce so much pollen.

Mobility

From a commercial/agricultural point of view, hives of bees can easily be moved from crop to crop where all of the above apply. Bees are regularly employed to pollinate crops of oil seed rape, borage (star flower) and top fruit in the UK.

Meanwhile in the USA, fruit farmers and beekeepers have evolved a highly efficient annual migratory existence following a variety of crops west to east by the truckload across the country. They are paid for their services as pollinators and of course there is the honey too. Crops they are paid to pollinate include apples and pears, cherries and almonds, melons, cucumbers and squash, cranberries and sunflowers. For honey there are orange blossom, alfalfa, California buckwheat, blueberries, Brazilian pepper, palmetto, basswood, clover and gallberry to choose from.

It could be said that they have, between them, created a specialist relationship like the delicate orchid/bee example above. One that is very focussed and even efficient but also very vulnerable and we’ve seen what can happen with the disastrous Colony Collapse Disorder.

Here in Ireland, while farmers will welcome beekeepers onto their land when they are growing oilseed rape or apples etc there are few who will pay the beekeeper to move.

But read on…

The Future

The drive towards increasingly intensive agriculture is accelerating. Each year, more hedgerows and patches of scrub are ruthlessly wiped off the landscape and mixed meadows  reseeded with rye grass. Habitat destruction causes the extinction of wild pollinators and this may lead to an increase in demand for mobile beekeepers here but we should know where that stuff leads.

But always look on the bright side of life – that’s my motto!

Click here for the mechanics of Pollination

Click here for more on Gorse Pollination

Click here for more about Himalayan Balsam

Click here for Ireland’s Pollinator Plan 2015-2020

Sources

Attenborough,D.  Life on Earth – A Natural History. BBC, William Collins and Reader’s Digest. 1979.

Campbell,N.A.  Biology – Second Edition. The Benjamin Cummings Publishing Company Inc. USA. 1990.

Mairson,A.  America’s Beekeepers – Hives for Hire. In National Geographic Vol. 183 No. 5. 1993.

Raven,P.H., Evert,R.F. & Eichhorn,S.E.  Biology of Plants. Worth Publishers Inc., New York. USA. 1986.

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2016.  All Rights Reserved.

It is quite a large hardy plant – at least 2m in height – with glossy, dark green evergreen leaves equipped with spines and it will live for up to 20 years. When in flower it is very glamorous indeed – branches can be smothered in clusters of bright orange flowers and a-buzz with bees of many species.

Here’s a honey bee enjoying the weather and the Berberis in full bloom:

Click on this picture below and you can almost see the nectar gathering in the flowers:

Click here for April  Bee Flora

Click here for March Bee Flora

Click here for Bee Flora

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2016.  All Rights Reserved.

It is when it’s got a great thick woody stem and a big bushy crown with flowers all over it.

Hedera helix 

Depending which book you consult, there is one species of Ivy – Hedera helix and up to six possible subspecies in Ireland and Britain. Two subspecies are present in Ireland – H. helix ssp. helix or Common Ivy and H. helix ssp. hibernica, Atlantic Ivy.  Both are common throughout Britain and Ireland. However, Atlantic Ivy is more commonly found in Ireland, Wales and the western half of Britain while Common Ivy is more common throughout Britain and in the south west of Ireland.

If you want to find out which sort you’ve got – take a close look at the growing shoot-tips with a powerful magnifying glass – if the little hairs (trichomes) are greyish white with star-shaped tips sticking up at angles then that’s H. helix ssp. helix. If they are brownish and lay flat that’s H. helix ssp. hibernica

They also vary in chromosome numbers which means they do not hybridise which makes things easier!

But is it a tree?

What is a Tree?

Consult Chambers Dictionary(1901) and you will find a tree defined as, “a plant having a single trunk, woody, branched and of a large size.”

Or in Collins Pocket Dictionary (1988) a tree is “a large woody perennial plant with one main trunk which develops many branches.”

If you ask Mr.Google he says it’s “a woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground.”

All trees go through at least three different growth phases before they can be considered a tree – after all they don’t spring forth from the seed as a large wood perennial with one main trunk and many branches do they?

No they don’t – there are three phases:

• Young – seedling;
• Juvenile – sapling;
• Mature – tree.

Well it’s the same with ivy.

Ivy Growth Phases

Young

Young ivy plants tend to be creeping ground cover until they find something to climb. They are adapted to survive and grow at very low light levels to be found on a forest floor. They do this by growing very slowly.

If it is a deciduous woodland – winter sunshine filtering down through the bare canopy will allow the ivy to continue to grow even in winter.

Juvenile

The juvenile phase involves growth away from the dark forest floor up towards the sunlight. Upwardly mobile shoots put out little sucker feet as they go and attach themselves to their chosen scaffold whatever that may be. As they continue to grow upwards, they put out side shoots or tendrils which strive to encircle the tree – putting out more of those little sucker feet as they go. Where there are several ivy plants growing up different sides of the same tree, between them they weave a twining network like a string vest as they go.

The juvenile phase can last several years during which time several things can happen at the same time:

• The ivy vest matures. It becomes woody and inflexible and tightens up as the individual stems thicken;
• Where stems cross each other, natural grafting occurs and they fuse together making the network even more inflexible;
• The tree, continues to grow adding growth rings and expanding its girth – or trying to;
• The homely old vest turns into a straitjacket.

Just beneath the bark are little tubules called xylem and phoem. These are like our veins and arteries – but instead of blood, they conduct water and the products of photosynthesis around the tree from source to sink.

So while the tree trunk is trying to expand, the ivy cladding is constricting xylem and phloem. The net effect is the ivy starts to strangle the tree.

The slow strangulation can continue for years and during that time the canopy of the tree starts to thin because the tree can no longer support as many leaves. More sunlight comes through and the ivy enters the mature phase.

Mature

The mature phase is when beekeepers and bees start to take an interest in the ivy.

It has a woody stem and with its head out in the light it grows itself a bushy top with many self-supporting branches – a canopy of its own. It now meets the dictionary definition of a tree and with a wealth of lovely sunlight shining right onto its very own canopy – it turns its thoughts to reproduction and comes into flower.

Bingo!

Bring on the bees.

Friend or Foe

Ivy has great value for wildlife but there is debate about whether ivy kills trees or not  and confusion about whether or not it is a parasite.

• Ivy uses trees to climb up but it doesn’t directly parasitise them;
• However,  its roots are cheek by jowl in the same soil as the tree roots so they do compete for water and nutrients;
• They also compete for sunlight. While a tree is in good health – its canopy is dense with layers of healthy green leaves. Little sunlight gets through so the tree is able to keep the ivy in its place;
• However, each winter, deciduous trees lose their leaves and winter sunshine comes through;
• The ivy is evergreen and continues to grow – albeit at a slower rate – all the way through the winter and early spring continuing ever onwards and upwards while the tree sleeps.

Creepy ain’t it?

But the ivy sows the seeds of its own destruction because when it completely colonises the crown of a tree and grows its bushy canopy two things happen.

• The stangulation of the tree means the roots are starting to suffer because they need the products of photosynthesis to survive.
• When the autumn and winter gales come, the bushy evergreen canopy of the ivy acts like the sails of galleon and eventually the two trees – the ivy and its partner tree capsize together.

To Cut or not to Cut?

In a woodland setting this is natural cycling and part of the functioning ecosystem. When a tree comes down  – there is a clearing. Young trees which have been languishing in the dim light of the forest understory put on great spurts of growth as they race up towards the light. Until new trees have regrown, the ivy is banished once again to the forest floor.

However, on trees like ash and hawthorn which grow in hedgerows and have loose open crowns – ivy is a pest. When allowed to rampage away without check – hedgerows are transformed to tottering lines of derelict trees.

Also in parks and gardens it can destroy beautiful specimen trees. In such situations ivy does need to be checked but in the woods it is best to accept it and enjoy it.

For the birds

Ivy provides much needed shelter, roosting and nesting sites.

It also supports many insect species which are food for birds.

Apparently the ivy berries are as calorific as a Mars bar and great for blackbirds although they tend to leave them till everything else has gone.

For the bees

As we know it is a bee plant of some importance – especially here in Ireland. It is a source of late summer – autumn nectar and pollen which the bees use to build up on and boost winter stores.

For those of us who are organised – it can provide a crop of honey when it flowers early.

Click here for more about Ivy Honey

Click here for details on how to prepare for a crop of Ivy honey.

The pollen loads are yellow and in mellow autumn weather they come thudding in like mad.

For the Humans Beeing

Ivy is said to be poisonous if eaten in quantities so don’t do that.

An ivy bedecked stick on the front of a house was once the signal to all and sundry that there was beer for sale.

Perhaps they chose ivy because it is said to cure hangovers.

For the same reason, Bacchus – god of wine – is crowned with a wreath of ivy leaves on his head thus – the twerp:

Or is it because he’s going to fall over soon as well!

Click here for ivy honey cold cure recipe

Click here for Bee Trees – Hawthorn

Click here for Bee Trees – Hazel

Click here for  Bee Trees – Horse Chestnut

Click here for  Bee Trees – Sycamore

Click here for Bee Trees – Willow

Click here for Bee Trees – Lime

Click here for Bee Trees – Poplar

Click here for Melampsora Rust Spores

Sources

Biological Records Centre http://www.brc.ac.uk/

Clapham, A.R., Tutin, T.G. and Warburg, E.F. Excursion Flora of the British Isles. Third Edition. Cambridge University Press. 1995

Fitter. R., Fitter. A. and Blamey, M. The Wildflowers of Britain and Northern Europe. Collins. London. 1985

Keble Martin, W. The New Concise British Flora. Book Club Associates, London. 1978

Metcalfe, D.J. Hedera helix L. Journal of Ecology Volume 93, Issue 3, pages 632–648, June 2005

Online Atlas of the British and Irish Flora

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015.  All Rights Reserved.

Poplars are a complex, wind-pollinated, pioneer tree species and they interbreed like mad; as a result they can be difficult to identify. There are many species world wide and several native to Europe. In addition, fast growing hybrid cultivars have been bred and these are much planted for timber. There is also interest in the fast growing varieties for short rotation coppice as a biomass crop.

In Ireland only two Poplars are considered native – although other species have been introduced as ornamental trees or for timber, shelter-belt or screening.

Irish Native Poplars

• European aspen or Populus tremula;
• Black poplar – Populus nigra – although there is some doubt about this one.

The European aspen is a very glamorous autumn tree when the weather is right as this photo below shows. By the way, if you click on any of these photos you’ll get a better view:

And here are some individual aspen leaves:

Note the broadly toothed or wavy leaf margins which distinguish it from the related American species Populus tremuloides or Quaking aspen.

Both of the aspen species have flattened petioles or leaf stems which makes the leaves flutter and clatter in every tiny breeze. Hence the names: tremula and tremuloides.

Non-Native Poplar Species in Ireland

In addition other species of poplar have been planted as ornamentals or as timber trees:

• White poplar or P. alba;
• Western Balsam poplar or P. trichocarpa;
• Many hybrids of P. trichocarpa x black poplar and perhaps P. deltoides x black poplar which can be planted for fast growing timber or as short rotation coppice for biomass cropping.

White poplar or P. alba

The white poplar P. alba is a native of Morocco and the Iberian peninsula and central Europe. It is widely planted throughout Ireland and Britain as an ornamental having attractive leaves with white, felted undersides which flicker brilliantly when stirred by the wind.

Again, it is possible the bees visit the catkins of these early in the year and gather a little pollen but it is not something I’ve ever seen personally.

Western Balsam poplar or P. trichocarpa

In addition is P. trichocarpa or Western Balsam Poplar which has been widely planted as a shelter-belt tree, or for screening, or as a fast growing timber tree. Such as this lovely row below on the river Barrow just below Milford near Carlow. I don’t know why they were planted (she added hastily) but they are in a line and they are lovely. Like all poplars these are thriving close to the river which does flood in the winter. In fact it floods in summer too.

In spring these trees look like the picture below:

A bit plain?

Not at all. At that time of the year, late March, just as the buds are breaking and the new leaves are unfurling – the scent of them is wonderful. It is this smell that gives them their name and any beekeeper getting a whiff of this will immediately recognise it as propolis.  So would the bees who most certainly visit for the propolis and perhaps the catkins too.

These (above) are the late-summer leaves of the Balsam poplar. The slightly serrated leaf-edges distinguish P. trichocarpa from the closely related P. deltoides and hybrids. When the leaves are freshly opened in spring they have a slightly wet look, are sticky to the touch and strongly propolis scented.

In addition to the propolis and the possible catkin-pollen, poplars have a further possible value to the bees Melampsora rust spores.

Melampsora Rust Spores

Poplars are susceptible to a genera of rust fungi called Melampsora. These fungi invade the leaves of poplars causing blisters or pustules which eventually rupture to release the powdery orange spores which no doubt have given rise to the common name of ‘rust’.

Honey bees will gather the spores of Melampsora rusts in times when pollen sources may be scarce. This year I saw my bees bringing in large quantities of bright tangerine orange pollen – or what I thought to be pollen but when I tried to identify it the only thing that was anything like that colour in the pollen guide (and from Mr. Google of course) was Melampsora rust spores. This is what they looked like but the photos don’t do justice to the vivid orange colour of the spores.

An unfortunate consequence for the trees is that the bees are helping to vector the disease.

So that’s three things the bees get from Poplars – a little pollen, propolis and an emergency pollen substitute.

Poplar Timber Uses

Poplars are fast growing so the timber tends to be on the light side. It is used nowadays for paper pulp, joinery, veneers and plywood.

In the past it was used in carts and floorboards and also in a Medieval architectural technique known as cruck building where pairs of massive curved beams were upended and joined to form a roof which was then thatched.

Here’s an interesting one: because the wood is odourless it is considered ‘food safe’ and is much used in France to make those lovely cheese boxes Camembert comes in. It is also used to make fruit boxes. This is why you see so many groves of poplars growing in France – much bedecked with mistletoe.

Still in France – apparently when a landowner has a daughter he plants a grove of poplars. The reason being that by the time she is ready to marry, the poplars will be ready to be felled (fast growing you see!) and the price the farmer gets for the timber is used for the dowry. You learn something new every day – or so they say.

Poplar wood is not much use as firewood because it spits but it can be grown in short rotation coppice and chipped for use in wood burning electricity generators or made into pellets for pellet burning boilers.

For other bee trees:

Click here for Bee Trees – Hawthorn

Click here for Bee Trees – Hazel

Click here for  Bee Trees – Horse Chestnut

Cick here for Bee Trees – Ivy

Click here for  Bee Trees – Sycamore

Click here for Bee Trees – Willow

Click here for Bee Trees – Lime

Click here for Melampsora Rust Spore

References

Edlin,H.L. The Tree Key. Frederick Warne, London. 1978

Hart,C. Practical Forestry. Alex Sutton Publishing, Stroud, Gloucestershire. 1991

Hart,C & Raymond,C. British Trees in Colour. Michael Joseph Ltd., London 1974

Howes,F.N. Plants and Beekeeping. Faber and Faber, London 1945

Isebrands,J.G. & Richardson,J. Poplars and Willows: Trees for Society and the Environment. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and CABI . http://www.fao.org/3/a-i2670e.pdf

Kirk,W.D.J, A Colour Guide to the Pollen Loads of the Honey Bee. IBRA 1994

Phillips,R. Trees in Britain, Europe and North America. Pan Books. London. 1978

Strouts,R.G & Winter,T.G. Diagnosis of Ill Health in Trees. Forestry Commission. 1994

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An alternative explanation for its arrival in this side of the world is the cotton industry. Balsam seeds came in with raw cotton bolls and during the cotton milling process they escaped into the rivers. The cotton mills being powered by water were of course situated close to fast moving water. I like this idea because it fits neatly with childhood memories of holidays in Lancashire 50 years ago where Himalayan balsam was a common occupant of stream banks and ditches. Like the ditch near the sweet shop where we used to buy sherbert in paper cones.

Ecological Disaster Area

Himalayan balsam has become unpopular because it spreads very quickly along watercourses and pushes out the native perennial vegetation.

Ok says you – may the best man win, it is very pretty and the bees love it. Not so fast says I and look what happens when winter comes:

• Himalayan balsam dies because it’s an annual;
• River banks are left bare because not much is going to grow in winter;
• Winter water levels and faster flowing water erode the naked river banks;
• Hey presto – flooding.

Description

The fancy name is Impatiens glandulilfera the same family as Bizzy Lizzies: aka Impatiens walleriana. ‘Impatiens‘ because the ripe seed pods burst – impatiently – in your hand, firing seeds into the distance.  The ‘glandulifera’ bit relates to its creepy mucus-secreting glands which are thought to be redundant artefacts inherited from carnivorous ancestor plants. The unpleasant rank smell is thought to come from the mucus. That smell takes me right back to the sweet shop and the sherbert.

Actually when you look at the pink or white flowers there’s a bit of the Pitcher plant about them with that frilly-lipped, gaping mouth and bulbous back end.

The plant is tall and stately – often topping 6ft in height – taller than many policemen nowadays. It can possibly reach as high as 10ft.

You’ll recognise this chap of course – this is the actor Jack Warner as PC George Dixon in the black and white 1950 film ‘The Blue Lamp’. You’ll see from his old style police helmet exactly how the Himalayan balsam got its common name. The flowers are approximately the same shape but as if worked on by a gay milliner.

After his success in ‘The Blue Lamp’ (1950) with Dirk Bogarde – PC Dixon escaped the confines of the old black and white movie and went global (like Himalayan balsam) as ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ occupying TV screens across the nation from 1955-76 by which time he was in his eighties and available in colour.

But I digress.

As a bee plant

It is a very popular and reliable plant for the bees who will travel some distance for the nectar. Flowering as it does in August it fills the gap between the end of the summer main crop and the autumnal ivy flow helping the bees going into winter.

Popular too with beekeepers who may take a late summer crop from it.

You will know if your bees have been on the balsam as they will have a distinctive white smudge of pollen on the thorax like this:

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One of my apiary sites is in a nature reserve on a small raised bog in Kildare. The clover and blackberry are in full bloom all around the fringes there so I expected to find the bees with brown or grey pollen loads. However, I was surprised to find them bringing in a lot of vivid orange pollen and no, that’s not propolis. Of course I’d come out without my camera so had to make do with my phone and these pictures don’t do the colour justice. Click photos to enlarge.

When I consult the relevant pages of  IBRA’s:  ‘Colour Guide to the Pollen Loads of the Honey Bee’ by William Kirk, the only one I can find which is both close in colour and available in quantity at that site, is Poplar leaf rust fungus aka Melampspora larci-populina!

If you google that, you’ll find some images of the rust on its host species  and you can imagine it packed into honey bee corbiculae.

It seems that the bees will indeed gather rust spores in times when pollen is in short supply. As the bees visit poplars to gather propolis you’d have to wonder if they help in the spread of this fungus?

Click here for more pollen load photos

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Admittedly the earliest flowering ivy was a few miles downhill from here and we are on up on the north face of a chilly hill where most things are late, however – it’s still quite a spread you must admit.

Every warm day now, the bees are all over it gathering pollen and whatever nectar there may be. Spot the bee – click on the photo below for a better view.

Some of the flowers in this picture were pollinated some time ago and you can see the berries developing, russet now but black later. Some are still in full bloom and others are only buds. These last will almost certainly not open at all.