Tag Archives: pollen

Pollinators & Essential Services

Posted on by
8

I’ve been meaning to write this blog for years, but it took a global pandemic – and the fact that this is National Pollinator Week – to spur me into action. Because in a pandemic we need essential workers, and on this planet there are no workers more essential than pollinators. Think of it: in all flowering plants not pollinated by wind (grasses and many trees are wind pollinated), bees, buterflies, moths, birds, beetles, ants and other insects are responsible for transferring pollen from a flower’s male anthers to the receptive female stigma, ensuring fertilization of the ovum, the creation of fruit and later the ultimate dissemination of seed. Without pollinators, the world as we know it would be as it was more than 135 million years ago: boring. No need for colour, since grasses and birches and pines don’t need to wear flashy hues to have the wind disperse the pollen the produce. No need for flower fragrance, since the wind doesn’t need to be lured to flowers like moths to a nocturnal species.  And wind pollination is so wasteful! Look at how many male white pine cones fall to the ground in the evolutionary effort to pollinate the receptive female cones. (This is my dock on Lake Muskoka north of Toronto, by the way).

No, insect pollination was a giant step forward, beginning with plants that looked vaguely like modern magnolias, likely fertilized by beetles. (I couldn’t find any beetles so substituted honey bees on Magnolia grandiflora, below).

Bees evolved initially from wasps. The earliest honey bee ancestors emerged in Asia roughly 120 million years ago. Bumble bees arrived on the scene between 30 and 40 million years ago.  Modern honey bees and bumble bees, like those below on globe thistle, are the descendants of an ancient lineage of insect pollinators

As gardeners, we sometimes forget that there was a time when the natural world did not revolve around us. It got along just fine without Homo sapiens. In fact, there are quite a few people who think earth fared much better without humans, but then consciousness and evolution have given us the ability to perceive our achievements and actions with feelings of pride tempered by a growing sense of guilt. Climate change, conservation, overpopulation – they are all serious issues today, but that’s not what I’m focusing on here. Instead, I’d like to write a little love letter to the workers in earth’s most essential essential service: pollinators.  Goodness knows I’ve spent enough time courting them over the past three decades and more.  Here’s one of my Toronto Sun columns from 1997.

And here’s a story I proposed and wrote on urban beekeeping for the now-shuttered Organic Gardening magazine in 2012.

Researching nectar- or pollen-rich flowers for beekeepers for that story and finding very little in current literature launched a multi-year focus on honey bees and their favourite plants. Out of it came a quite spectacular poster……

….. and the occasional magazine cover.

In time, I amassed such a large inventory of honey bee imagery (like the forget-me-not, below) that I decided to create an online photo library devoted just to them.  If you’d like to have a browse, it is located here.

I have written stories about beekeepers, including my friend Tom Morrisey in Orillia, Ontario, below. This was my blog on his late summer honey harvest at Lavender Hill Farm.

My beekeeping pal Janet Wilson out in British Columbia drove me to her hives in a blackberry thicket on a farm, and let me photograph her checking on the hives.

When I was on safari at Kicheche Camp in Laikipia, Kenya in 2016, I loved spending time with the camp’s beekeeper William Wanyika, and learning how he does his work.

However, they contain high cholesterol, which should not be using sildenafil india http://deeprootsmag.org/2013/02/12/gospel-news-notes-3/ Kamagra. In 1961, the Blackhawks pulled it together and won another championship with the help of teammates Glenn buy viagra http://deeprootsmag.org/2015/08/24/bob-marovichs-gospel-picks-22/ Hall, Pierre Pilote, Bobby Hull, and Stan Mikita. What is Drivers Ed for Adults Drivers generico levitra on line ed for adults is a driver’s education class specifically tailored to older drivers as opposed to tailored to teenage drivers. Relevantly, this move is aimed at helping ED-effected men to cialis cheapest be availed it at lower rate and reduce strain on their finance.

At Toronto Botanical Garden, I photographed the beehives and the student beekeepers….

….. and later that year I returned to photograph the honey harvest.

I enjoyed paying attention to nectar guides, the markings that plants have evolved to show pollinators exactly where to look for nectar and pollen. The European horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum), below, is an excellent example. Flowers with fresh nectar exhibit a yellow blotch; as the markings darken from orange to red, the bee knows that the flowers are old and no longer yielding nectar.

But as much as I appreciate the work that honey bees do, I have always understood that in North America, European honey bees (Apis mellifera) are very much domestic agricultural animals. They may be feral in places warm enough for them to overwinter, but in much of the continent they must be “kept”. Wild bees, or native bees, on the other hand, have co-evolved with our North American flora. Many of them are adaptable to a number of different plant species; they’re called “generalists”. Here is a montage I made of native North American bees and butterflies on native North American plants.

Other bees are “specialists”, requiring the nectar or pollen from one, or just a few, types of plants.  The North American squash bee (Peponapis pruinosa) is one of those, spending its short life acquiring food from the flowers of native squash plants, like the one below.

On vacation in Arizona, I was interested in the specialist native Diadasia australis bees who forage solely on opuntia cacti, like this Engelmann’s prickly-pear (Opuntia engelmanii).

At home, I have come to know my local native vernal or spring bees, like the polyester bee (Colletes inaequalis), shown below on early-flowering willow (Salix).

But I’ve been bemused in the past few weeks by native bees paying no attention whatsoever to my native plants and instead finding their sources of carbohydrates and protein in the nectar and pollen of non-native plants, such as the bicoloured sweat bee Agapostemon virescens working the wine-red flowers of European knautia (Knautia macedonica) in my garden, below….

… and a plethora of native pollinators, including the Eastern tiger swallowtail, avidly foraging on my neighbour’s Chinese beauty bush, Kolkwitzia amabilis, below.  

But some plants don’t need pollinators. While I was videotaping the June plants above, the birds were squabbling noisily over the first ripening serviceberries (Amelanchier sp.) nearby. (I photographed the one below on the High Line one June.) I was curious that in all my years observing my serviceberries and their clouds of tiny blossoms, I haven’t seen any pollinators attending the plants. How could I have such an abundance of early summer fruit? Scientists have shown that several species of Amelanchier have evolved “apomixis”, bypassing sexual reproduction, meiosis and cell division entirely – thus no need for insect fertilization. In apomicts, the ovum in the flower divides parthenogenically.

I adore bumble bees (Bombus species), and I’ve spent years trying to identify the ones I see in my gardens and even the species I encounter during my travels. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that I have a large photo inventory of bumble bees online. Below is my favourite of all, the brown-belted bumble bee (Bombus griseocollis). Isn’t that the perfect name?

And I do have a soft spot for Toronto’s (un)official bee mascot, the bicoloured agapostemon (A. virescens), shown here foraging on purple coneflower in my garden.

Though many people dislike them for their wood-boring trait, particularly if it happens to their pergolas or sundecks, I love watching carpenter bees (Xylocopa virginica) using that strong tongue to bore into the corollas of certain flowers, like the Nicotiana mutabilis, below. Biologists call that “nectar robbery”, i.e. the bee is effectively bypassing the evolutionary pact between bee and pollinator to gain the reward without transferring pollen from one flower to another.

At the Toronto Botanical Garden, where I’ve contributed my photography as seasonal galleries,  I spent a few seasons tracking pollinators on the plants, and made a musical video to celebrate them.

My city garden in Toronto was designed as a pollinator garden, too. It contains both native and non-native plants. I’ve shown this video a few times in my blog, but here it is again throughout four seasons.

And at my cottage on Lake Muskoka, I look upon almost every plant in my meadows, garden beds and planters as a chance to invite bumble bees, solitary bees and hummingbirds to sup on the mostly native plants I provide for them. (Please note that the vernonia should be V. noveboracensis).

So to celebrate National Pollinator Week, I would like to encourage all of you to think about your relationship as gardeners to the natural world. Should your garden really be all about you and what you like? Or do you agree with me that we should also consider that….

Pollen for Honey Bees in a Rainbow of Colours

Posted on by
10

You hear a lot about flower nectar, when people talk about growing “flowers for bees”, but you don’t hear nearly as much about pollen. And given that pollen, and by extension pollination, is the principal quid pro quo in the evolutionary pact that sees bees trade sex services for food, much more should be written about pollen. It is of vital importance to the bee larvae, for which it is the protein that develops their growth. In one of my classic old books on beekeeping, Plants and Beekeping by F.N. Howles (1945), he writes: “It has been calculated that about ten average bee loads of pollen are necessary to produce one worker bee and that on an average one pound of pollen rears 4,540 bees, which works out at about 44 lb. of pollen for an average colony’s breeding requirements in a season.” Without sufficient pollen, the colony would die off.

Because I spent several years photographing honey bees (Apis mellifera) for a book idea I once had, I got to see a lot of pollen up close and personal, like the golden pollen being patiently collected from Gaillardia ‘Mesa Yellow’, below.

I saw bee faces completely dusted with sticky pollen; I watched them perform aerial dance maneuvers as they packed pollen into their corbiculae, before settling back onto flowers; and I observed them flying back to the hive, legs laden with saddlebags of pollen in all colours of the rainbow, like the white datura pollen below.

It’s pollen colour in all its wonderful variety that I want to celebrate here, from the first blossoms of spring to the last of autumn.

Let’s start with hardy perennials and bulbs. Crocuses have very large pollen grains. I’ve watched honey bees curling their entire bodies into silken crocus chalices, like C. x lutea ‘Golden Yellow’, below.

Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) produces azure-blue pollen.

Little striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides) rewards visitors with beige pollen.

Grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum) can often be seen with bees working the flowers as they open from the bottom of the spike up. Pollen is whitish-cream in colour.

Orchards are filled with bees in spring, among them honey bees, thus ensuring that there will be tasty fruit come late summer. This is the hardy ‘Reliance’ peach (Prunus persica) with light-brown pollen.

The Dutch call alpine rockcress (Arabis alpina) “honigschub’ or honey bush and it’s easy to see why. Very early in spring, before most perennials have thought about emerging, arabis is feeding the bees nectar and a sticky light-brown pollen.

Although forget-me-nots are prodigious nectar sources – especially considering the vast quantities of the tiny flowers in spring gardens – their pollen grains are among the smallest measured and from my observations, not very prominent in corbiculae (pollen baskets). But for a bee to insert its tongue into the narrow corolla of a forget-me-not, the net result will be that some pollen will dust off on the proboscis and the head, which the bee will gather for the hive. And because of that narrow opening, pollen is often mixed in with the nectar that forget-me-nots yield, and is measurable in the honey.

Though the shrubby European honeysuckles like Lonicera tatarica, below, can be invasive, they are good early sources of pollen.

The bright-orange pollen of California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) is always a great lure for honey bees.

When the yellowwood tree (Cladrastis kentukea) has a good year for bloom – sometimes just one year in three – the flowers with their tawny-gold pollen are avidly sought out by honey bees and native bumble bees and solitary bees.

Beekeepers always know when Oriental poppies (Papaver orientale) are in flower, because homecoming bees are dusted with black pollen.

Peony stamens are a rich source of pollen, with one count estimating a single peony might have 3.5 million pollen grains.  This is Paeonia ‘Sunday Chimes’, below.

The knotweeds (Centaurea sp.) are excellent plants for bee forage, and beautiful in the late spring-early summer garden.  Globe centaurea (Centaurea macrocephala) offers pollen in golden-yellow…..

….. while Centaurea dealbata ‘John Coutts’ produces creamy-beige pollen.

Southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) is irresistible to bees when the prominent stamens are yielding their creamy-white pollen, below.

Native American copper iris (I. fulva) is popular with hummingbirds, but on the High Line one day, I watched honey bees patiently working the flowers and securing ample loads of near white pollen.

Knautia macedonica is my very favourite pollen producer, yielding a rich magenta-pink pollen that makes honey bee faces look adorable and their packed corbiculae seem like airborne jewelry.

Roses, especially single and semi-double forms with prominent stamens, are often good sources of pollen, which they yield mostly in the morning, apparently. The David Austin shrub below produced amber-brown pollen.

The generic or scientific name is the term given to the men over a time of three minutes and all these soft cialis greyandgrey.com are possible by consuming the concerned drug then should inform the doctor before availing the drug dosage. With powerful tadalafil soft tablets ability to self-repair and self-rectify, inherent immune system can protect our body from being affected by disease. Trigenics is an avant-garde treatment system for nerves and muscles, that provides immediate relief from pain and muscle spasms. buy viagra in stores Back To The Point! like this order generic levitra Ok, so to get back to work. Not to be confused with true roses, Mediterranean rock roses (Cistus species) are also popular with honey bees. The bright-pink hybrid below produced a rich golden-orange pollen.

Certain clematis species are good sources of pollen. One that flowers in early summer is Clematis koreana – and the bee working it had packed a jewel-like pollen pearl in her pollen basket.

Filipendulas are good forage plants and native qneen-of-the-prairie or meadowsweet (Filipendula rubra) provides pollen in early summer for native bees and honey bees. This is the showy cultivar ‘Venusta’ with creamy-white pollen.

Bumble bees and honey bees are always buzzing around globe thistles (Echinops sp.), which yield a whitish pollen from the masses of tiny flowers.

To see a planting of helenium or sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale) in full sun in late summer is to see a happy bee festival. And the abundant pollen is rich orange. One source mentions the bitter nature of helenium honey, but at the point where helenium is in flower, beekeepers are often letting the bees collect nectar for winter honey stores.

Japanese anemones (Anemone x hybrida) yield neglible nectar but the yellow stamens are rich sources of white pollen.

With its masses of tiny, white flowers, sweet autumn clematis (Clematis terniflora) is very popular with bees. I watched the honey bee below doing an intricate aerial dance to pack in white pollen from a massive vine.

By the end of summer into early autumn, the various goldenrods and asters (Michaelmas daisies) offer nectar that is often vital for bees to survive winter, though most beekeepers must provide additional winter food for their bees. (Goldenrod makes a strong honey that is not generally sold commercially.) But bees also collect pollen from these late perennials, like the very late-blooming showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa), below, with its golden-yellow pollen. This will help sustain the hive until spring.

Of the asters, I loved this image of a bee hanging from lance-leaved aster (Symphyotrichum lanceolatum), its corbicula packed with yellow pollen…..

….. and the beautiful New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) and its many cultivars, like the one below, are well worth growing in every garden – something lovely for you and the bees as the season ends.

Annuals and tender perennials and bulbs can also be good sources of colourful pollen. This is Ageratum houstonianum with lots of pure white pollen.

Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) and their many cultivars are a treat for all types of bees, especially the native sunflower bees adapted to this North American flower. But honey bees enjoy nectaring on the tiny ‘true’ flowers and gathering the yellowish pollen, too.

Single portulacas (P. grandiflora) have bright orange pollen, as you can from the bee crawling out of the silky blossom below.

I’ve seen lots of tender S. African bulbines (B. frutescens) growing in summer gardens recently, much to the delight of honey bees gathering pale yellow pollen from the feathery stamens.

Weeds like Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense) are never appreciated by gardeners, and many are highly invasive and on noxious plant lists. But you will often see bees of all kinds foraging for nectar and pollen on thistles…..

….. and dusting themselves completely with the white pollen of the pretty blue summer flowers of chicory (Cichorium intybus)…..

…. and flying about with the telltale yellow ‘pollen head’ that is a sure sign that the bee has been in a toadflax flower (Linaria vulgaris).

Finally, I’d like to include a few vegetables that bees like – not for the stems or the roots, but for the flowers that have resulted from the plants “bolting”. This is what happens to a radish (Raphanus sativus) when it’s going to seed – yellow pollen much appreciated by this little honey bee.

Brassicas like broccoli, cabbage, kale and Brussels sprouts also form flowers as part of their biennial life cycle – and the bees love the yellow pollen that forms.

Last but not least, a perennial vegetable we all know and love for its tender spring shoots – but have you watched bees gathering bright orange pollen from the tiny, yellow male flowers? It is a feat of acrobatics worthy of any high-flying trapeze act!

(PS  – Are you a bee-lover? To see a large selection of my honey bee stock photography, visit my Smug Mug pages.  And you’ll find a load of bumble bees and other native North American bees and bee kin on my page as well.)