What is a bee's favourite take-away food?

When the weather isn't great, it seems unfair that bees have to go looking for their food when the rest of us have so many easier options... (well some options for those of us living in rural France!).  As Spring approaches though, things on the food front do change for the better for our girls and as more plants and trees start to come to life, the range of pollen and nectar available grows which means a varied diet and (hopefully) healthy young bees.

We have a challenge for the eagle-eyed this week!  How many different 'take-aways' are the bees bringing back to their hives where you are?  Or, how many different colours of pollen can you see on the bees' back legs, just flying around the garden?

Foraging worker bees have a pair of 'collecting sacks' on their back legs which they fill with pollen grains from the flowers they visit.  Pollen is a great source of protein and other minerals which is then taken by other worker bees in the hive and stored around the frames as food for young bees.  So, if we are seeing workers flying back to the colony at this time of year with pollen, it is fairly likely that the queen is laying eggs again after the winter.  In fact, if the winter has been mild, she might not have stopped!

The fun challenge is to try and work out what plants or trees the pollen is coming from :-) The grains themselves are different colours for different plants and you can see in these three pictures, all taken at the same apiary on the same afternoon, that our girls are busy visiting different food sources.

If we can work out what they are foraging on, we can build an understanding of a) what they like and b) what grows where we are at certain times of year.  Hopefully this enables us to plant, or at least find, more species that we know our bees will have access to when they need it.

There are lots of different resources available to show you what is growing and when but have a quick look at the simple image here and see if you can identify the pollen our girls might be bringing home.


Do let us know how you get on in the comments :-)