July: Pollen identification night

What better way is there to spend a Tuesday evening than by picking some flowers straight after work and heading on down to the apiary?  These lovely local examples weren't for feeding the bees though...

This is the serious business of examining pollen grains...

We didn't drink that much tea before getting on with making up the slides...

and, thanks to some nifty extra bits on the microscope we pretty soon all had some interesting pollen grains to view...

Fox Glove

Red hot poker

Alstromeria

And some even more fascinating combinations "borrowed" from pollen baskets on bees' legs...

Definitely an interesting way to spend a Tuesday evening...