72 Hardy, Mixed Pollen Collected by Bees. F^' 



let, Nat. 

 Ausfust 



one bee taken from a red hollyhock, at Kew, had at least four 

 kinds of grains, including representatives of two species of 

 composite flowers — gaillardia and chrysanthemum. 



Samples of the stomach contents of two diseased hive bees were 

 given me by Mr. Price, of the Victorian Department of Agriculture 

 — one from New Zealand, the other from the Grampians district, 

 Victoria. The latter proved to have a homogeneous collection 

 of pollen from eucalyptus blooms, but the New Zealand sample 

 contained seven sorts of pollen, shown in the accompanying 

 drawing (plate vii.), though one form predominated and the sixth 

 and seventh were scarce. 



In the case of a native Victorian bee which Mr. F. Spry, of the 

 National Museum, Melbourne, had provided, and identified as 

 Nomia metallica, there were in one-quarter of the pollen mass at 

 least eleven forms of grains, the supply having been drawn not 

 only from different species, but in several instances from families 

 phylogenetically remote. (See plate vi., in which, as in plate vii., 

 the grains are numbered in their order of frequency.) 



Knuth states, in " Handbook of Flower Pollination," p. 146, 

 that *' Pollen-balls consist of only a single species." I am at a loss 

 to know whether this remark by the chief authority, since Mueller, 

 on the subject of flower pollination, is to be read as an exact 

 statement of fact or as a broad rule to which the usual exceptions 

 are to be understood. Knuth does not for a moment leave us in 

 doubt as to the bee visiting various species of plants during one 

 trip. On the contrary, many examples are given, but these are 

 mainly to illustrate the carrying of mixed pollen on parts of the 

 body other than the collecting baskets, and obtained, during a 

 search for nectar, more by accident than design. Kerner,* too, 

 remarks that — " Insects certainly show preference for a single 

 species for considerable periods, particularly when the species 

 is flowering in quantity on a confined space. Still, anyone who 

 closely observes insects visiting flowers can easily convince himself 

 that the flowers visited are changed from time to time," &c. 

 Here again is probably a collection of a by-product, as it were, 

 and not the deliberate collection of the pollen into the collecting 

 baskets. It is generally admitted, I think, that pollen and nectar 

 may be collected by a bee during a single trip from the hive. 

 Langstrothf states "that if a few pollen-gatherers be dissected 

 when honey is in plenty the honey sacs will ordinarily be 

 full." 



From six bees captured on alighting at a hive at Mr. Beuhne's 

 Tooborac Apiary, I obtained only one form of grain on dissecting, 

 and these insects had come home from various points of the 

 compass. The grains were collected from the eucalyptus trees 

 {E. goniocalyx) the only high level bloom available at a time 



***Nat. Hist. Plants," vol. ii., p, 403. 

 t" The Hive and the Honey Bee," p. 119. 



