How to Be a Bee-Botanist Using Pollen Spectra

Abstract

We evaluate bee pollen taxonomy analytic techniques for honey and pollen harvested by a stingless bee and a honeybee. Pollen counts and concentrations, calibrated with an internal Lycopodium spore standard, and the misapplication of pollen counts to nectar or pollen importance—or honey origin—are emphasized. We sampled a meliponicultural favorite, Tetragonisca angustula, and also Africanized Apis mellifera, from seven Neotropical countries, considering honey or pollen harvested at the peak time of “honeyflow” in areas of natural vegetation. An index of pollen diversity, the number of botanical species divided by the number of honey samples, yielded approximately 16 for T. angustula and 12 for A. mellifera. However, little difference was found between the means of the averages for each region—33 for T. angustula and 34 for A. mellifera. Corbicular pollen loads for Apis were not single pollen species and had varied color when one species dominated. Tetragonisca occasionally used “pollen-only” flowers such as Spondias, but Apis used many (e.g., Mimosa) as major resources which dominated honey but were not from nectar, and in general, used more minor resources than recorded for the stingless bee. Those minor resources, scored quantitatively by pollen analysis, may nonetheless be among primary nectar sources. The nectar species of both honeybees and stingless bees had some consistency over different geographic areas of forest but were most consistent in de-forested patches, where secondary vegetation has abundant pollen-only species and is used heavily.