Honey

Today I have mostly been trying to stain some honey so that the pollen can be visualised can the source flower can be id'ed. Did I ever mention that I'm doing me PhD in developmental biology? NOT Palynology. Oh, this is why my project is moribund.


Apparently the flavour of honey is in some part dependent on the flowers the bee collected her nectar from. This being a hard nosed science blog (stop sniggering) I should back this up with some hard data and a couple of peer reviewed papers. However, I've already wasted too much time finding out about pollen stains to be bothered to look it up. That and the fact that as a mammal biologist, I wouldn't have the slightest idea of how to find that sort of stuff out.

Here is a picture of the honey pollen I stained with a fuschin basic jelly (3.5g gelatin dissolved in 20ml water at 50C, add 25ml glycerol and o.2ml phenol. Mix at 50C. Add Fuschin basic dissolved 1% in IMS or Ethanol until a rich pink colour, in case you are interested). A prize goes to the first person to email in with the correct analysis if the pollen.