POLLEN.

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume VI, Issue 2, 15 February 1913, Page 192

POLLEN.

L. Bowman.

All observing beekeepers who take a pride and interest in . their apiaries have seen the busy little toilers coming home laden with small pellets of a paste-like substance attached to their legs. This substance botanists call pollen. The question arises, where do bees get pollen ? The keen beekeeper’s attention is arrested by a bee working, say, on ■ a dandelion. She is very busy, and is practically covered all ■ over with a bright - yellow dust. For a moment she stops delving into the heart of the flower to clean herself, and as we stand almost breathless, afraid to disturb her, watching every movement, we see she is packing the pollen into little baskets called the corbicula, which nature has provided for the purpose. Having ascertained that pollen comes from flowers, we pull a bloom to investigate it a little more minutely. In doing this some of, the pollen settles on one’s fingers. By the use of a small magni-fying-glass we discover that the flower is composed of a number of smaller flowers, called florets, so arranged as to make a complete and beautiful whole. . Turning our attention to an individual floret we' notice again it is composed of more parts, . each having a function to perform. The anthers, being the male portion, contain small pouches or sacs which, when matured and ripe, burst open, shedding pollen-grains, or the fertilizing dust. As the bee works from flower to flower, conveying pollen on the fine hairs of her body, she comes in contact with the pistil, or female organ, the end of • which will be found to be sticky, the pollen-grains being held there by this substance. The tiny grains begin to grow down the tube of the pistil until they reach the micropyle of the ovum, there shedding the favilla. As soon as this takes place inoculation is completed. Flowers then begin to drop their petals, and the plant devotes its energies to the development of fruit : in the shape of seeds. The microscope is again, brought into use for the purpose of examining the pollen-grains further, and for ordinary observation purposes w T e generally use a 1/6 lens. Having made a collection of pollen from several different flowers and mounted them, we find, on looking at them through the .microscope, that they are truly wonderful, varying in size, shape, and colour. .

So far we have regarded pollen from a botanical point, but the question arises, what use do our bees put it to ? In order to answer this we proceed to the hive. On close observation we notice, even with the naked eye, that pollen varies very much in colour. Here we see a worker bee just alighting on the board at the entrance of the hive, carrying pellets of bright yellow. Just a little further on we see another with blue pellets, and close at hand one with cream pellets, next to her another with orange, brown, green, and so on. Amongst many of the earlier beekeepers who ■ were not so well acquainted with matters concerning the hive this pollen was supposed to be material which bees gathered to make wax for comb-building. In those days, when skeps, boxes, and suchlike receptacles were used as a domicile for bees, there was really little hope of finding out what bees really did with the pollen, such hives being a veritable closed book. With, however, the vast improvements made in the methods of keeping bees, in properly constructed hives with movable frames, the closed book has been unsealed, thus affording a wonderful amount of food for thought. As we withdraw a frame from the modern hive we admire the beauty and regularity of those fragile and marvellously constructed six-sided cells.. On closer observation we see larvae in all stages of development, and find that the pollen which the bees have brought in from the fields has been deposited in quite a large number of the cells, stored for future use, and kept moist by the addition of a little honey. When in this ’ condition it is often spoken of by many beekeepers as bee-bread. Pollen is a nitrogenous food used by' the adult bees, as well as the nurses, who use large quantities to rear larvae. .. ..

It is a well-established fact that a dearth of pollen-bearing flora in spring retards brood-rearing considerably. Whenever this is noticed ’ the wideawake beekeeper usually supplies this want by placing pea-meal flour or rye-meal in small boxes in a sheltered, sunny place.

Pollen which has been damaged by early frosts often proves injurious to bees, disarranging the digestive system and often terminating with dysentery. Pollen-grains in honey will give it a cloudy appearance. Pollen in honey is also liable to cause fermentation.

Pollen-grains, infinitesimal though they seem, are the mighty atoms ' that the world is dependent upon, and without their aid no creature could exist.