A comparison of three methods for assessing the relative abundance of pollen resources collected by honey bee colonies

SummaryWe compared three different methods for determining the presence and abundance of various pollen resources collected by honey bees: 1) a colour-based segregation of the pollen loads collected in pollen traps; 2) examination of trapped pollen in distilled water; and 3) examination of beebread in distilled water. We concluded that all three methods can give satisfactory qualitative information about the main pollen sources. However, we found significant differences among the three approaches regarding the abundance of pollen resources.