23
NEW ZEALAND BEEKEEPER, MAY 2017
Tk1 P8 honey
Taraxacum
TREES FOR BEES CORNER
Others
Clematis
WHAT’S THE USE OF POLLEN? Leptospermum Pennantia
Knightia
Ranunculaceae
Dr Linda Newstrom-Lloyd (Trees for Bees Botanist)
Pollen and nectar are critical to bee health and beekeepers’ livelihoods. The more you nourish bees, the more they flourish into super-strong colonies with powerful foragers that can maximise honey harvesting and pollination services. Ericaceae Kunzea Trifolium
This year we saw that having a diversity of pollen and nectar sources in apiary sites spreads the risk in years when flowering is poor. For instance, some beekeepers were able to harvest excellent tāwari honey in spite of this year’s poor flowering in other plants, particularly mānuka and clover. A diversity and abundance of pollen sources improves bee health and reproduction, while substantial abundance of a valued nectar source can lead to high purity for a monofloral honey. This means that a comprehensive understanding of what the bees are foraging on each month is one of the most valuable types of information a beekeeper can gain about an apiary site. Pollen Profiles for apiary sites provide important evidence by showing the relative proportions of different pollen types that bees bring into the hive, either in their bee pollen pellet loads or in the nectar they store. New protocol being developed Trees for Bees has been developing a new protocol for producing Pollen Profiles for apiary sites. The profiles help determine what pollen and nectar sources are available at the site and what the bees prefer. The results of Pollen Profile analyses can be used to generate a list of year-round preferred bee plants that are adapted to the locality and climate of the apiary site. As deficit periods are discovered, the gaps can be filled in with preferred bee plants that are best suited to the area. The quantity and quality of floral resources at a site can be optimised by planting more of the best candidate plant species from the local list. We modelled our work on the pioneering study in New Zealand by Harris and Filmer (1948). They used pollen profile analyses to detect which plants the bees are foraging on for both pollen and nectar. They sampled pollen from hive pollen traps and frame
Tk1 P8 pellets
Cordyline
Pelargonium Ericaceae
Taraxacum
Clematis
Trifolium
Knightia
Rubus
Asteraceae
Figure 1. Pollen Profile for pollen pellets taken from 24 hour pollen trap for Hive TK1 at Naati Beez Site at East Cape, sampled on November 27, 2015
Tk1 P8 honey
Taraxacum
Others
Clematis
Pennantia
Knightia
Leptospermum
Ranunculaceae
Trifolium
Kunzea
Ericaceae
Figure 2: Pollen Profile for fresh nectar/honey taken from frames in Hive TK1 at Naati Beez Site at East Cape, sampled on November 27, 2015
Tk1 P8 pellets
Cordyline
honey to calculate the percentage of pollen types in each. Based on these pollen profiles, they interpreted which pollen and nectar sources the bees were using within the foraging range of the apiary. Pelargonium Ericaceae
We explored the Harris and Filmer methods in our pilot study with Naati Beez. This project was described in a poster at the Apiculture NZ 2016 conference (Raine et al., 2016) and later articles in The New Zealand BeeKeeper Taraxacum
continued...
Clematis
Made with FlippingBook Annual report