http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9755-2949
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ABSTRACT
Honey bee (Apis mellifera) colony maintenance depends on foraging workers to obtain food resources from flowering plants year round. Because diverse floral diets have a positive impact on honey bee health, identifying the plants preferred by foragers provides valuable information to manage bee-friendly habitats. Recent studies have utilized palynology to better understand honey bee nectar foraging preferences. Futhermore, the International Honey Commission has established standards for analyzing honey samples. However, standards for studying the plant taxonomic composition of honey bee pollen pellets have not been established. The goal of this project was to determine the minimum number of pollen grains that need to be counted to obtain an accurate floral taxonomic representation in a pollen pellet sample. To do this, pollen samples were collected from pollen traps placed outside honey bee hives, and a pollen subsample foraged by each colony was acetolyzed and identified to the lowest taxonomic level possible. Cohorts of 100 pollen grains obtained from homogenized pollen samples from three different colonies were counted successively 5 times for a total count of 500 pollen grains per colony. This was repeated for each of the replicates from the three separate colonies. We found no statistically significant differences in the number or proportion of floral taxa found between the 200 and 500 pollen grain counts in two out of the three colonies sampled. Species diversity index analysis suggested that the higher number of floral taxa found in some 500-grain counts were attributed to a relatively low presence of minor pollen types. Thus, a 200 pollen grain count seems sufficient to assess the predominant, secondary and important minor plant taxa present in a pollen sample, while a 500-grain count may be needed to elucidate a more specific taxonomic assessment of additional minor taxa floral types to determine a sample's geographic origin.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the collaborating beekeepers from the Austin Area Beekeepers Association, Joseph Sullivan from Ardea Consulting, Alexandria Payne, and Vaughn Bryant's staff for lending their palynological identification expertise. We would also like to thank the Herb Dean ’40 Endowed Scholarship and the Texas Beekeepers Association for their financial support to PL. This study was funded in part by a grant to JR by Bayer Crop Science (award number M1402691) and the Texas AgriLife Research Hatch Project number TEX09557.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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Pierre Lau
PIERRE LAU completed his undergraduate studies in ecology, behavior, and evolution at the University of California, San Diego. He is a third year graduate student in the Department of Entomology at Texas A&M University, College Station, TX. The focus of his PhD dissertation research is on honey bee health in urban and suburban environments, particularly the effects of pollen nutrition on colony health. He has achieved the level of advanced beekeeper from the Texas Master Beekeeper Program and was the 2015–2016 President of the Entomology Graduate Research Organization at Texas A&M University. Pierre has received several awards since his arrival to Texas A&M University, including being the 2016-2017 Texas Beekeepers Association Research Grant Awardee, obtaining a 1st Place: Oral Competition award at the 2016 International Congress of Entomology Annual meeting, Orlando, FL, a 3rd Place: Oral Competition award at the Texas A&M University's Department of Entomology Graduate Student Forum, and a 2nd Place: M.S. Oral Competition award at the 2016 Southwestern Branch Meeting of the Entomological Society of America in Tyler, TX.
Vaughn Bryant
VAUGHN M. BRYANT received his degrees from the University of Texas at Austin (BA in geography; MA in anthropology; PhD in Botany), and currently is a professor of anthropology and the Director of the Texas A&M University Palynology Laboratory. He is also an adjunct professor of forensic sciences at the University of Nebraska. Vaughn has been managing editor and President of AASP – The Palynological Society. He has been awarded the Distinguished Service Award, the Honorary Life Membership Award and the Medal for Excellence in Education by AASP – The Palynological Society. Currently he is secretary and one of the trustees of the AASP Foundation.
Juliana Rangel
JULIANA RANGEL graduated cum laude in 2004 from the program of ecology, behavior, and evolution at the University of California, San Diego. That same year she began her doctoral studies in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Working under the supervision of Dr Thomas D. Seeley, her dissertation explored the mechanisms and functional organization of reproductive swarming in the honey bee Apis mellifera. In January 2010 she joined the laboratory of Dr David R. Tarpy at North Carolina State University as the coordinator of the “Born and Bred in North Carolina: Queen-Rearing and Bee-Breeding Program,” through which she trained over 1,000 beekeepers across several states in the North Eastern United States. In 2010, Juliana was awarded one of 15 National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowships in Biology. In January 2013, Juliana became assistant professor of apiculture in the Department of Entomology at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX. Her research program focuses on the biological and environmental factors that influence the reproductive quality of honey bee queens and drones, the health and population genetics of feral honey bees, and the quality and diversity of floral sources collected by honey bees in developed areas across the country. She is also an active member of the Texas Beekeepers Association, has spoken to numerous beekeeping associations in Texas and across the US and was the 2014 President of the American Association of Professional Apiculturists.