Pollen

Honey bee workers collect pollen and nectar from a variety of flowering plants to use as a food source. Honey bees typically forage from up to 1-2 miles away from the hive, though sometimes they travel even further, including up to 10 miles away. However, much of the modern landscape consists of agricultural fields, which limits the foraging options for honey bees in these areas.

Middle School Girls Gained Real-world Science Skills at Pollen Power! Camp

Nearly 30 girls attended the Institute for Genomic Biology’s weeklong summer camp that is devoted to the science of pollen

Middle school girls learned that pollen does a lot more than help flowers reproduce at Pollen Power Camp!, a weeklong summer camp hosted by the Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In a paper published in PLoS ONE, scientists at the University of Illinois released their findings on what microscopy techniques are needed to identify the shape and texture of pollen grains. Understanding pollen morphology is important to classifying ancient vegetation.

Because pollen morphologies often align quite closely to taxonomic groupings, understanding the appearance of ancient pollen allows scientists to better understand prehistoric flora in the context of modern-day ancestors.