Pollinator Decline

Pollinators, including honey bees, are in decline all over Europe due to habitat loss, climate change and modern  agricultural practices. All the usual culprits. This is fact.

Anybody in doubt about that should cast their minds back to the good old days when car windscreens would be so plastered with crushed insects – regular stops were needed to scrape them off.

Mind you, cars were rather less streamlined then and a bit more – er – ‘boxy’:

Einstein

Einstein said, “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years left to live“.

They now say he probably didn’t say that at all but then they would wouldn’t they.  Whether he said it or not – the bleak nugget of truth in that sentence seems to have reached most people.

Threatened Pollinators

Ireland’s wild pollinators include 20 species of bumble bee, 77 solitary bee species plus 1 species of honey bee. All of these are entirely dependent on flowers to exist so it is bees that carry out most of the pollination services.

33% of these are threatened with extinction.

Other pollinators include flies, butterflies, moths, wasps, ants, beetles.

Between them, their pollination services are thought to be worth €153 billion worldwide and at least €53 million in Ireland.

In response to the very real threat to these insects and (god forbid) the economy, many countries including Ireland have put in place plans to attempt to reverse the trend of pollinator loss.

Ireland’s Pollinator Plan 2015 – 2020

Biodiversity Ireland with Trinity College Dublin and a 15 member steering panel of experts have devised a 5 year plan to address pollinator decline and protect the pollination service these insects freely provide to agriculture, horticulture and the countryside in general.

 Objectives

The plan has 5 objectives:

• Making Ireland pollinator friendly.
  Pinpoint things that can be done on farmland, public land and private land, to create an interconnected network of wildflower-rich pollinator-friendly habitats.
• Raising awareness of pollinators and how
  to protect them.
  Increase awareness of the importance of
  pollinators and the resources they need to survive.
• Managed pollinators – supporting beekeepers and growers. To achieve healthy, sustainable populations of managed pollinators that can play a full role in delivering pollination services.
• Expanding our knowledge of pollinators and pollination service Increase research and knowledge to find the best and most cost-effective ways to protect pollinators.
• Collecting evidence to track change and measure success Survey pollinators and monitor change to ensure the Plan is working.

Eighty one actions have been indentified to achieve these aims and have been shared out among sixty-eight governmental and non-governmental organisations which have agreed to support the plan.

The recommended actions include:

Hedgerows

Planting new hedgerows with native species such as hawthorn, hazel, willow and blackberry etc. Old hedgerows should be maintained properly and cut less often. Vegetation at hedge bases should not be sprayed so wild flowers are conserved.

 Wildflowers

Should be encouraged along hedges, lanes and field corners. Buffer strips containing native wild flowers should be planted along field margins and cut between September and April only. Further management practices can include grazing to conserve and improve these areas.

Nectar and Pollen rich shrubs and trees

Planting of willow, hazel, hawthorn, horse chestnut and blackthorn in hedges and field corners, parks, schools etc.

Nesting Areas

Tussocky grass and nettles provide nesting areas for bumble bees. Bare uncompacted ground for solitary bees.

The Other Bits

I added the photo below to demonstrate just how much land is not hedgerow or hedge base. When these fields are planted with rye grass, rye grass, rye grass  or in modern day crop rotation of barley, barley, barley, wheat, barley, they are as about as useful to bees and other pollinating insects as these flooded fields:

Funding

The plan points to government initiatives that are already in force and it is hoped that communities and local authorities will formulate projects and seek funding from local and national government. There is also the possibility of funding from Europe.

Honey Bees

All of these measures will help honeybees and that is to be welcomed. However, apart from the spectre of mapping and education on diseases the plan is a bit short on specific help for honey bees. All beekeeping associations already provide education on diseases.

The plan describes honey bees as being ‘domesticated’ or ‘managed’.

Domesticated

Before the Varroa mite, which came in with imported bees in 1999 or thereabouts, the honeybee lived as wild as all the other Irish pollinators. Until recently it was thought to be extinct as a wild species but recent research has shown that Ireland’s native bee – Apis mellifera mellifera is in fact alive and kicking in the wild. Presumably it is adapting to cope with Varroa – perhaps becoming swarmier.

Imports

It is a shame that no steps are suggested in this plan to prevent further imports of foreign bees and the exotic pests that come in with them. That would have helped to protect the honey bee.

Managed

Also the plan says this, “The needs of managed honeybees are very different to those of wild pollinators. Beekeepers can move colonies to where forage sources are available, and can provide extra resources over the winter.”

Well, that’s just not true. The majority of beekeepers in Ireland are hobbyists – that is they have a couple of hives in the garden and no other apiary.

To move bees, you need to have somewhere to take them and you need the know-how to move them. It’s not a walk in the park you know. Moving bees is stressful for both bees and beekeepers. It is not for the fainthearted – it is ticklish, potentially dangerous and certainly not for the novice. But that’s for another post.

Conclusion

Much is made of planting wildflowers but there are wildflowers and there are wildflowers. Anyone thinking of sowing wildflowers should try and get Irish natives. Foreign wildflowers evolved with foreign insects and may not be appropriate here.

Irish wildflower seed is available from Sandro Cafolla – more info on his website www.wildflowers.ie

Click here for Biodiversity Ireland and the Ireland Pollinator Plan

Click here for Irish Wildflower seeds

Click here for Hedgelaying Ireland

Click here for more about Bees and Climate Change

Click here for Bee Trees – Hawthorn

Click here for Bee Trees – Hazel

Click here for Bee Trees – Ivy

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

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015.  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.

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

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

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:

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

… bees cannot live on honey alone. While the sugars in honey supply the bees’ energy needs, in addition they require the protein, fats, minerals and the miscellaneous dietary supplements found in 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 and quantity 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 young 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, thoraxes 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 from 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.

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 and even hawthorn. 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 a miserable autumn 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. Click here for a recipe for pollen substitute from the Scottish Beekeepers but be careful to buy GM free ingredients.

 Some sources of pollen in Ireland …

… in this locality sources of pollen include:- Snowdrop, Crocus, winter Ericaceous heathers Hellebore, Gorse, Hazel, Willow, Dandelion, Currants black and white, Oilseed rape, Hawthorn, Apple, Pyracantha, Cotoneaster, Sycamore, Horse chestnut, Clover, Raspberry, Lime, Blackberry, Thistles, Ragwort, Knapweed, Native Ling and Bell heathers, Ivy, Mahonia.

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.

An example of this could be bees in America where they tend to have single species diets for blocks of time throughout the year due to migratory beekeeping and very regimented agriculture. This is thought to be a contributory factor in Collony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

Click here for more on pollination.

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.

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

Click here for ‘Bee Trees – Hawthorn‘

Here’s a photo of a hawthorn bee with pollen, click it for a better view

When there is this much honey from an early flow it’s best to take at least some of it off if only to spare the beekeeper’s back. Take only the sealed honey if possible, that way you’ll leave some for the bees in the June gap.

If, however, you suspect there may be rape in amongst it – you have no choice – you will have to take the lot off. If they have no feed below you should rapid feed a gallon or so of strong syrup but take the supers off first or they’ll put it in there.

Alternatively you could place a lump of fondant or better still Ambrosia (special bee fondant made with inverted sugar) over the feed hole. They won’t put this in the supers but if they need it – it’s there and it will also pull the bees straight up in to the supers which might help prevent overcrowding → swarming etc.

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The forecast for the next few days is good, so with the trees in full bloom there is a good chance of a few pounds of honey.

For more sycamore information click here

If you click on this picture you should be able to see a close up of the snot green pollen loads.

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Here’s a hectic picture of lots of pollen hurtling into the scale hive today.

• The yellow pollen loads are willow.
• The brown pollen loads are gorse.

Click the photo for a better view.

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There are several species of wild garlic all of which are closely related to the garlic we buy in the shops (Allium sativum).  Only 3 members of the garlic family are resident in Ireland, only two are of interest to the bees and only one is a true native but all of them are edible.

• Ramsons or Allium ursinum or ‘Bear garlic’- native Irish plant (see header photo above)
• Three Cornered Leek or Allium triquetrum – probably introduced from Europe 3 hundred years ago (photo below)

The bees visit both species although it’s nothing they’ll ever get a crop from, which is probably just as well.

Pollen loads are yellow as displayed by this very obliging, if slightly fuzzy, bumble bee seen here on some Three Cornered Leek or Allium triquetrum. Click it for a better view.

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Here’s a bee on the hellebore – you can see the grey-green pollen .