Earlier today I spent some time with Charlie Nicholson going through what was my strongest hive and the only one to produce any harvestable honey for me this year.  I say was because the hive seems to be dropping off every week in health.  There are fewer and fewer bees and they are taking very little of the heavy, 2:1 sugar syrup I am feedign them to try and get them to build up more stores for winter.  Maybe I shouldn't have harvested any honey from them, but at the time I was not only excited to harvest but the hive seemed to be doing just fine and have plenty of time to build up for winter.  Either I was wrong, something took a turn for the worse for the bees, or some combination of the two.

Anyway, Charlie has approached Philadelphia Beekeepers to see if anyone would like to help him learn if there is a correlation to the breadth of pollen in a bees diet and the hives health.  We went through the hive frame by frame and took a picture of the brood pattern on each one. Charlie is going to analyze the pattern with software and see if he can draw conclusions between the apparent hive health and the pollen he identifies in honey samples collected from the hive.  Its an interesting idea for his masters thesis, and I wish him luck and hope I get to hear the results!  Here is the explanation in Charlie's own words:

To the members of the Philadelphia Beekeeping Community,

Greetings! My name is Charlie Nicholson; I am a researcher in the Botany Dept. at The Morris Arboretum. I am currently developing a study that will analyze the origin of pollen found in the honey produced by Philadelphia area bees.
 
Mellissopalynology is the botanical characterization of honey based on represented pollen types. Typically, this type of research is done to determine whether commercial honey producers are actually selling "monofloral honey" (i.e. pure thyme/clover/alfalfa/etc honey). As a botanist and ecologist, I am really interested in the polyfloral nature of honey produced by bees in urban areas. 

My project aims to:

• Determine the plant taxa visited by Philadelphia bees through identification of pollen grains found in honey samples
• Complete a floristic inventory of bee-relevant plants in Philadelphia's urban environment 
• Document bee foraging preferences. 
• Analyze the correlations between diversity of pollen types in honey and hive size.

I hope to sample from Langstroth style hives within Philadelphia County. A complete sample consists of four elements:

• About 100ml of unfiltered honey (roughly 3 oz.)
• The GPS coordinates of the hive
• Frame length and width measurements
• Digital photograph of the frame

 
The honey will be prepared and analyzed with a microscope to identify the plant taxa contributing pollen to your hive. The geographic location of the hive is relevant and GPS coordinates will help create a botanically informed “honey-map” of urban Philadelphia. The frame measurements and photo will help be calculate the number of brood cells per unit area.
 
How YOU can help! I am hoping that some members of Philadelphia's beekeeping community would be willing to be sampled. In addition to a small amount of this season’s honey, this entails a trip to your hive and a look at the frames with brood on them. It won’t take too long and I think the cumulative results will be fascinating!