Last week’s pollen run (and a nudge from a good beekeeping friend) inspired me to visit my school’s science lab with a pollen sample from the landing board of one of my hives. I am blessed to work with a science teacher who humors me enough to share his equipment on occasion. After a few minutes of fussing around trying to remember my high school microscope skills, I managed to get a decent enough view of my pollen. I trolled Google images with my best guesses –filbert and dandelion– and was rewarded with a pretty satisfying match. The image I have borrowed here is most likely not our native filbert, but the closely-related European filbert. Close enough for me to conclude that my bees were in the filberts last week.
The whole episode left me excited about creating a floral calendar and/or map for our area. Because there are so many micro-climates in Lane County–from the Willamette Valley, to the foothills east and west, to the Coast–floral sources and their timing vary greatly. Knowing what’s blooming, building up a record over several years, and associating those bloom times with developments in the hive can help us manage honey production and anticipate major events like swarming. For example, Judy Scher, an experienced Eugene beekeeper who’s been keeping records for a few years, has been able to correlate her neighborhood’s forsythia bloom with drone rearing in her colonies. Drone rearing precedes queen rearing and swarming, so Judy can prepare her swarm management strategy accordingly.
Are there any adventurous souls from elsewhere in the county that might be willing to collaborate in this project? I will be awaiting your reply–and dreaming of microscopes!