Collection and Identification of Pollen from Honey Bee Colonies

Does sorting by color using visible and high‐energy violet light improve classification of taxa in honey bee pollen pellets?

“…Color sorting is an inherently subjective process; therefore, all means to standardize conditions should be taken for results to be relevant and reproducible. Studies that use ambient light, either by stating so (Stoner et al, 2019 ) or by inference (Conti et al, 2016 ; Topitzhofer et al, 2021 ), fail to account for the effect of shadows, daylight changes, and lighting source quality in their sorting and color assignments. By sorting and assigning colors inside a light box, we decreased variation in color perception and created a space where an observer could ostensibly re‐sort a sample and achieve the same or similar result.…”

“…By sorting and assigning colors inside a light box, we decreased variation in color perception and created a space where an observer could ostensibly re‐sort a sample and achieve the same or similar result. Many researchers choose to sample prior to sorting (Conti et al, 2016 ; Stoner et al, 2019 ; Topitzhofer et al, 2021 ), but this technique risks omitting rare pollen colors. We advocate sorting into colors first before continuing to process pollen to ensure all color groups are accounted for in subsamples, and future studies could directly test this by comparing the conventional use of random subsamples to the sorting method we propose here to validate whether a greater number of rare colors are accounted for.…”

“…As bee‐collected corbicular pollen is often variable in color, this has been used as a basis to sort pellets based on pollen composition to determine plant species use (da Silveira, 1991 ; Conti et al, 2016 ; Salazar‐González et al, 2018 ; Stoner et al, 2019 ; Topitzhofer et al, 2021 ; Hornby et al, 2022 ). Reliably categorizing pollen pellets by color requires standardization of color choice either by using an instrument to determine pellet color (Salazar‐González et al, 2018 ; Hornby et al, 2022 ) or by comparing color to a standard set of color cards (Conti et al, 2016 ; Stoner et al, 2019 ; Topitzhofer et al, 2021 ). However, standardized and reproducible methods are lacking.…”

“…However, standardized and reproducible methods are lacking. For example, one frequently used method first takes a subsample of pellets, then sorts them by color (Barth et al, 2009 ; Conti et al, 2016 ; Topitzhofer et al, 2021 ). Subsampling pollen pellets prior to color sorting saves time but may exclude rare pellet colors, thereby underestimating the species richness of the pellet sample.…”

The Foraging preference of stingless beekeeping in three types of land use at Lombok Island

“…Pollen is a substance that is accidentally carried away by stingless bees when visiting flowers (Dahlia et al 2019). The collection and analysis of pollen carried are often used to identify the types of plants visited and favored by the insects (Topitzhofer et al 2021). The diversity and abundance of their sources are important to provide adequate nutrients for bee colonies (Lau et al 2019), but there are limited studies on pollen sources for stingless bees.…”