so hello happy Sunday everyone today is September 1st and we're looking at the
pollinators out here on the sunflowers early morning pollinators were of course
bumble bees and then the honeybees are joining them by the end of this video
there are a lot more honey bees about 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. they were really
hitting the sunflowers and they're going on the sunflower faces that face the
Rising Sun first no big surprise there cuz it'll be drier and they're after
nectar and just like this little bee here this is a honey bee apis mellifera
and she is collecting pollen on her hind legs now you notice that what we're
showing here is very slow this is 20 percent of their normal speed why would
it do that other than the fact that it just looks cool and video to see them
moving slow I want you to see how they're collecting pollen from the
sunflowers and how they're getting it to their hind legs look at this bee that's
flying here to the left they do this so fast in real-time that most people don't
realize how they do it and that's what I'm going to share in this video we're
gonna talk about some of the benefits of sunflowers that you may not be aware of
we have a lot of different sunflower varieties here and the honeybees jump
sunflower to sunflowers so that as long as it's the same species even though
they practice you know floral constancy which means it wouldn't go for example
from sunflowers to some kind of milkweed for example they would stay on
sunflowers but they do jump between the 10 different species of sunflowers we
have here I want you to see the bee on the right what's it doing the hind legs
are specially designed to hold the pollen but the pollen directly for many
of the plants that they get it from simply won't stick to their legs and
look at the four legs of this bee she's rubbing them across her mandibles there
is a mandibular gland right above the mandibles which around the face of
honeybees so those four arms and then she also extends her tongue and strokes
her forelegs down the tongue as well so they're getting glandular material
plus they're getting nectar off of the tongue and then raking that back to the
center legs and then ultimately to the hind legs to pack the pollen into the
pollen baskets and that's pretty cool but like I said normally you don't see
that that's what makes it sticky that's also what makes pollen kind of sweet I
don't know if you've ever gathered pollen as it's delivered to the colony
but it has not yet become be bred so when you set up a pollen trap as I've
done in other videos and you collect bee pollen that's coming straight from the
flowers on its way into the hive it has not become bee bread but it does have a
sweetness to it and that's because they're contributing the nectar that
they're gathering here right along with the pollen how much come how much pollen
can a honeybee carry well according to entomology departments
that are doing research up to 35 percent of the body wheat body weight of a
worker bee can be pollen and notice to that it's stuck on the body hairs of the
bee and that's because bees have split ends on their hairs so when they fly it
generate static static causes the dry pollen to cling to it and then they can
groom it around until they pack it onto their pollen baskets and as I already
mentioned they're adding saliva and glandular material from their mandibular
glands to that pollen and that makes it a little darker than the pollen as it
exists on the plant itself this is just a great opportunity to watch them this
was all video this morning and I'm also glad that my video camera audio problems
have been resolved so there are some other things I want to talk to you about
there is a North Carolina State University study on going about
sunflower pollen specifically I know everybody wants to plant pollen sources
on their property that are the best for the bees and the sunflower pollen by
itself is not a really high protein concentrated pollen so what benefit is
it other than its abundant because I have thousands of sunflowers the bees
are really loading up on this pollen but is there a secondary benefit they're
sure is there's a study going on that shows
that sunflower pollen can protect European honeybees apis mellifera from
pathogens such as Nosema ceranae so no Zima which as most of you may know
is honeybee diarrhea it's a bacteria that goes on inside the colony if they
collect this pollen this pollen from sunflowers can actually defeat Nosema
specifically Nosema ceranae so that's an interesting side effect that when I was
planting all these sunflowers I was not even aware of now that studies ongoing
and you can follow that up sunflower pollens medicinal and protective effects
on bees and you can find out more about that at North Carolina State University
beads fed a diet of sunflower pollen show dramatically lower rates of
infection that's cool here comes a bumble bee right there the bumble bees
by the way we're flying much earlier when I went out this morning it was
probably eight thirty quarter to nine in the morning there weren't a lot of
honeybees yet but the bumble bees were out there in fact it's evident that some
of the bumble bees spent their night on the sunflower phases now sunflowers are
actually when you're looking at the face of this it's composed of many different
flowers so the benefit is pretty broad though because all these pollinators are
going to get their proteins from it they're going to take that back to their
colony and of course that gets turned into bee bread and that gets fed to
developing larvae inside the hive but the benefit of course is to the
sunflowers as well because they're getting pollinated and then what happens
wild birds have lots of seed to feed on so sunflowers are just great all the way
around and again we're gonna just keep showing you the honeybees collecting it
because I want you to see the mechanics of them working it back from their face
to their middle legs to the hind legs packing it on those brushes on there I'm
like pollen baskets there's another thing we'll show you
here coming up and that shows the bumblebee I want you to see a little of
that behavior and I hope you're enjoying just watching them go I hope you've got
pollinators if you didn't by the way I bought these sunflower seeds as a seed
mix from Eden Brothers now look at this sunflower the same bees again will go to
different varieties of sunflowers and notice that they like the darker
sunflowers earlier in the morning and this bumblebee characteristic of a lot
of bumblebees that have found recently I think he's over eaten on nectar he's
loaded with pollen on his hind legs or hers I should say sorry and notice how
she extends that middle leg there there are some viral photos that go around on
social media somebody sticks her finger down it looks like a bumble bee gives
them a high-five by extending that foot what it's really doing is trying to fend
you off this bee is like Thanksgiving honey bee that's over eaten and can't
fly yet so whenever these honey bees which are to the left when they get
close to it it just sticks it's a little foot up that's covered in pollen and
tries to fend them off and tell them to keep away so if you want to get a
high-five from a bumble bee and you find one that's over eaten like
this and it's kind of stagnant on the face of a pollen source you can stick
your finger down there and it'll touch your finger and it'll look like it gave
you a high-five for those of you who like to attach human emotion to insects
so the bumble bees as I said sometimes I've collected bumble bees and they're
unable to fly they go right to the ground and they need a couple hours to
digest or use up some of what they've gathered or maybe they're just exhausted
but they can't fly yet and that's interesting I think they just overeat
it's covered in pollen and of course the upper honey bee there does not have a
lot of pollen on its hind legs yet that's because it's foraging day has
just begun the other thing is how many of the foragers out of the Beehive are
generally out for pollen well 15 to 30 percent of the foraging force in a bee
hive were out collecting pollen they really don't like to long-term store it
so they like to bring in fresh pollen as I've talked about before the pollen goes
through a fermentation process inside the Beehive and once it's worked
up and about 24 hours to 48 hours you get a really strong scent off of it so
then it becomes used for be bred for the developing larvae and then you get a
stronger colony and thanks to this pathogen study we know that there are
other benefits to sunflowers hope you got something out of it thanks for
watching and enjoy your hunting boots