The Pollen Landscape

In this book, we are going to follow one colony of bees through their year of gathering pollen, to see what they find, and how they use it. We will look at the plants which make the pollen too, and the different aspects of the relationship that pollen creates between flower and bee. With the help of a microscope, we can examine something of the variety of pollen forms, and see how those can affect the bees as they collect them. The cycle of the hive is obviously bound to the seasons, because these help to determine what food they can find, but to the landscape as well, and the kinds of plants it provides. So we will look at where the bees of this north Wales hive find their pollen, and use that to consider how they cope, or struggle to cope, in the landscapes that they share with us, and that we alter and shape for our own needs. Altogether, as well as seeing the variety of pollen types gathered by a particular colony in a particular place, we are going to examine the whole relationship between honey bees and this part of their diet that they work so hard to find.