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Did You Know?
The honey bee is not only one of
the oldest but is also one of the
most useful animals in the world to-
day. Stone-age rock paintings show
that honey was taken from bees
over 8,000 years ago. The oldest
man-made bee habitations can be
found on the island of Crete. They
are about 3,500 years old!
In this rock drawing, honey is being take from a
beehive.
Pollen Grains in Honey
In order to dive into the bizarre world of pollen grains, you will need:
• a slide and a cover slip
• water
• a cup and a teaspoon
• some honey
• a pipette
When working with honey, the utmost care should be exercised. Not because
it is dangerous, but because you don't want your microscope to become a
sticky mess. But surely you've already grown accustomed to the clean and
routine-filled manner of working like a true microscopist, so you won't have
any trouble. In order to prepare the honey solution, take about one teaspoon
of honey and stir it in the cup with about three teaspoons of water. Use the
pipette to transfer a drop of the cloudy solution onto the slide — and off you
go! Examine the honey solution at different magnifications and find out how
many different types of pollen there are. Maybe you can even match some of
the pollen types to a plant species if you compare them to the overview on the
previous page. After concluding your investigations, you should dispose of the
honey solution in a drain. It is neither suitable for consumption nor should it
be put back in the honey jar.
Now, let's get back to the Aztec dig. Assume that the old clay pot full of honey
was found in the grave of an Aztec ruler. As a burial offering, his people gave him
this pot of honey to take with him to the next world. The honey would surely no
longer be edible today. But the pollen grains in it would very likely still be there.
Pollen grains have a stable covering, so they are able to survive several centuries,
provided that the storage conditions are suitable. Scientists take advantage of this
fact to draw conclusions about the vegetation in earlier times. From the honey in
the clay pot, a specialist could say what plants were in bloom hundreds of years
ago when the bees collected nectar for the Aztec ruler's honey. In this way, pollen
grains are a window to the past.
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A bee collecting pollen on a willow blossom
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