Pollen morphology and its effect on pollen collection by honey bees, apis mellifera L. (hymenoptera: Apidae), with special reference to upland cotton, gossypium hirsutum L. (malvaceae)

Abstract

Honey bees, Apis mellifera, forage readily on flowers of upland cotton, Gossypium hirsutum, to harvest nectar. The abundant pollen gets caught in the haircoat of the bees, but cotton pollen is nevertheless rarely collected. Honey bee pollen collection effectiveness was therefore investigated in a flight room using cotton and five other spheroidal pollen taxa presented in sequence. Honey bees visited all pollen dishes, but okra pollen (Abelmoschus esculentus) was never packed successfully by the bees landing in the pollen dish. Cotton pollen was collected by 16% of the landing foragers, pumpkin pollen (Cucurbita pepo) by 71%, and pollen of corn (Zea mays), pigweed (Amaranthus palmeri), and sunflower (Helianthus animus) were readily collected by nearly all foragers. The amount of time spent in the pollen dish was always short (1 to 9 seconds) and homogeneous among all pollen taxa, indicating that none of them was strongly repellent to the bees. The reduced effectiveness with which honey bees collected cotton pollen was demonstrated by the longer amount of time needed for pollen grooming and packing between two consecutive landings in the pollen dish and the small size of cotton pollen pellets (averages of 0.42 mg and 8.23 mg per pellet for cotton and com pollen, respectively). This reduced efficiency in cotton pollen collection was associated primarily with the length of the spines on cotton pollen which physically interfered with the pollen aggregating process used by honey bees. © 1994 Scandinavian University Press.