Day #215 A Taste of Pollen

I discovered the most amazing thing! When I pull out the cardboard insert from under the yellow hive, I usually find scraps of the detritus that falls from the hive – mostly small flakes of white wax, little clumps of gray grunge that I think may be propolis, and tiny yellow balls of pollen. This picture isn't the clearest, but it'll give you an idea of what it looks like.

Apparently, it’s no simple task to transfer pollen from the corbiculae (the pollen sacs on the back legs of the forager bees) to the house bees who then store it in the comb. They drop some of it, and that falls through the screened bottom onto my cardboard. There is also the occasional bee-bit, a leg, a wing, or a back end that’s gotten separated when the clean-out crew moves a dead bee out of the hive.

I decided to take a taste of the yellow stuff. It’s SWEET! It tasted like dessert. A very small dessert, since each little puff-ball is only about a sixteenth of an inch (or less) in diameter.

And, before you ask – no, I didn’t taste test the bee legs. There’s a limit to my adventuresome spirit.

BEEattitude for Day # 215:

       Blessed are those who truly pay attention to what they see, for they shall find wonders indeed in and around our hives.

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