The other day while I waiting for Mathew’s school bus to arrive, I was sitting by our Calendula (Calendula officinalis) flower patch watching the honey bees collecting pollen. I find it fascinating as well as hypnotic. Some of the pollen sacks on the honey bees’ legs were HUGE. As the worker bee flew from flower to flower it packed pollen into its hairy receptacles known as pollen baskets or corbiculae, located on the mid-segments of its outer hind legs. Get this – a single hair functions as a pin that secures the middle of the pollen load and can you believe – a single bee can carry about half its own body weight in pollen. Now that’s simply amazing.
Honey bees are very efficient workers; they do not waste any pollen that they have worked so hard to collect. They moisten their forelegs with their tongues and brush the pollen that it has collected on its head, body and legs to its hind legs. The pollen is then combed, pressed, compacted, and transferred to the pollen baskets on their hind legs. They are very fast too, as it only takes an individual worker bee three to eighteen minutes to complete a pollen load and return to the hive.
Once back at the hive, the workers stuff all their pollen they collected into an awaiting cell. Unlike nectar-carrying bees, pollen-carrying bees have to unload their pollen themselves. In addition to depositing the pellets from their sacks, they will also groom away any pollen that is stuck to their bodies. They really are very efficient and don’t waste any pollen.
Honey bees usually forage only one kind of flower on any single trip. This is nature’s way of assuring that plants are cross-pollinated. Therefore, if a bee is going to blackberries, it keeps going to blackberries until there are no more blackberry flowers, and then it will switch to something else. The day I was observing the honeybees over the Calendula, the pollen was a beautiful bright yellow. Last year, when observing them collecting pollen from Holy Basil (Ocimum tenuiflorum) it was a vibrant red. The color was absolutely amazing almost unbelievable.
Honey bees collect pollen and nectar as food for the entire colony, and as they do, they pollinate plants. Pollen is an essential part of the honeybee’s diet, providing them a wide range of nutrients including protein, carbohydrates, lipids, vitamins, and minerals. The pollen contains 8 flavonoids, at least 11 carotenoids, vitamins C, E, all the Bs, all free amino acids, minerals, more than 100 enzymes and several growth regulators. The worker bees feed the pollen to the colony’s larvae, which are juvenile forms of the bees. Get ready for another amazing fact – an average-size colony may bring in 100 pounds of pollen in a season.
I tried my best to get a photo of a honey bee with a full pollen basket, but with all the movement and activity, it wasn’t easy. I hope I did it justice.
