Posts Tagged: pollen
Loving the Lupine
It's a given: Honey bees love lupine. We watched them buzzing around a flower patch of blue (lupine) and gold (California poppies) today along Hopkins Road, University of California, Davis, west of the central campus. Those are Aggie colors: blue and...
A honey bee heads for lupine. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Honey bee with a huge pollen load. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Saddlebags? No, a heavy load of pollen. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
How Tall Is It?
We have this tall plant in our back yard. How tall is it? Tall enough to give weather forecasts. (It's never caught “short” by a sudden storm.) Tall enough to see over the neighbor's fence to find a missing ball. Tall enough to be "the...
Honey bee packing a load of blue pollen heading for the tower of jewels, Echium wildpretii. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Young honey bee seeking another blossom on the tower of jewels. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Watching the Girls Go By
Pull up a chair and engage in a little "girl-watching." That is, honey bees heading home to their colony. Many beekeepers, especially beginning beekeepers, like to watch their worker bees--they call them "my girls"--come home. They're loaded with...
Honey bees making a "bee line" for their home. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Note the load of yellow pollen. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Queen bee and her retinue. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Why Honey Bees Forage in California Poppies
When you see honey bees foraging on the California poppy, the state flower, they're not there for the nectar. They're there for the pollen. "California poppies provide only pollen--no nectar," native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus...
Two honey bees foraging on a California poppy. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Honey bee with a pollen load. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
About that Pollen...
Why is that in a honey bee colony, workers can carry pollen but not the queen? Well, scientists from Michigan State University and Wayne State University have discovered the answer. They've isolated the gene that's responsible for leg and wing...
Honey bee packing pollen on an almond tree at UC Davis--on the grounds of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility-- several years ago. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Now that's a load of pollen! Honey bee inside a pomegranate blossom. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)