On 17/08/2014 11:05 PM, Karen Thurlow-Kimball, New Moon Apiary wrote:
> Some flowers produce more than one color pollen. Purple-loosestrife has
> three different length stamens each producing a different color pollen,
> greenish, dirty yellow and bright yellow. I used to live near acres of
> loosestrife and the bees frequently would have different color pollen in
> each corbicula when working this plant.

That is interesting.  I have never seen a bee work different plants and 
have so far not seen different coloured pollen in one load, despite 
having cleaned a fair amount of pollen for show and display purposes.

However this season I was watching a bee work a shrub/tree for pollen. 
The pollen was yellow and I have thought for years that the pollen was a 
grey colour.  The tree flowers multiple times, with about ten days or so 
between flowerings.  Later I was standing there during what turned out 
to be the last flowering for the season, and lo and behold the pollen 
was grey.  This season I will make an effort to check it during each 
flower burst, and check out more individual trees.

Geoff Manning

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html