Pollen Gallery
Pollen identification gallery
This gallery contains photographs of pollen collected within foraging distance of my honey bee colonies, here in rural Northumberland. The pollen was collected from plants when they were in flower.
The purpose of this gallery is to provide a way of initially identifying a pollen from its overall appearance. For many of the distinctive ones this can be enough but limitation of light microscopes may mean that it is only possible to identify the family.
The pollen gallery photos are in alphabetic order by common name. Try using the filter buttons below to filter by pollen load colour or by one of the top 10 families. See the similarities of pollen within the same family.
Apple – Malus pumila
Asparagus – Asparagus officinalis
Barberry – Berberis vulgaris
Bell Heather – Erica cinerea
Bird Cherry – Prunus padus
Also see our Plants for Bees Gallery.
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Acknowledgements
- Rex Sawyer’s book, Pollen Identification for beekeepers is essential reading for understanding the features of pollen. He defines much of the vocabulary to explain pollen features, as well as establishing the acknowledged Pollen Identification Key.
- Bob Maurer’s book, Practical Microscopy for Beekeepers, was helpful in starting in microscopy and shows some simple techniques for making up pollen slides.
- The NDB Microscopy short course and NDB Advanced courses provided excellent training on microscopy skills.
- The PalDat – Palynological Database was a great reference for looking at SEM photographs of pollen grain features, when my light microscope reached its limits.
- Brunel Microscopes after sales service was very helpful in setting up the microscope, camera and computer configuration.
- Zerene Stacker’s excellent layering software was used to improve the clarity and depth of focus on some of the images.