Well folks, in case you’re wondering what people do after their field work, here’s an example! All those pollen swabs that I took during the field season need to be analyzed, and the way to do that is to compare the shape/color/size of the pollen particles swabbed off the bees’ bodies to a reference vegetation pollen swab library. So, that’s what the images below are…my pollen library.

As you can see, not all pollen looks alike! Click on the images to zoom in and see what plants the pollen belongs to – there’s some coffee, banana, orange, tulip, asters, etc.

Enjoy!

Coffea canephora pollen

Bidens pilosa pollen

Orange pollen

Banana pollen

Random ground vegetation

African tulip (Spathodea campanulata)

Another random ground vegetation pollen

And another random ground vegetation pollen

And a final random ground vegetation pollen . This one is really cool