Pollen in the beehive

Our honeybees have been very busy collecting pollen. Pollen is their protein and they use in to feed themselves but particularly the brood when it is at larvae stage before the cell is sealed for its emergence as a baby bee.

They mix the pollen into a paste with a little honey and then pack each pollen type into a different cell. This picture shows how they tend to keep the different pollens separate creating a collage of different yellows and oranges. This picture is in April so the yellow is probably willow and the orange the blackthorn.

Sometimes you see greens, blacks, blues and even reds which are indications of what they have been foraging on. This picure below was taken last summer and the dark blue, almost black pollen is phacelia that we grow just for the bees.

Yellow pollen (probably from OS rape) and black from phacelia