MELITTOPALYNOLOGICAL STUDY ON ROCK BEE HONEYS FROM AHMEDNAGAR, INDIA

摘要

Bees are the best and most adaptable pollinators. Bees visit flowers to gather nectar and pollens. The nectar is converted into honey-the staple food, along with pollens it is fed to the larvae. The source of nectar and pollen therein determines the quality of honey. Determination of the botanical source of honey is an important virtue that helps to protect the consumer preference of specific origin of honey. Identification of unifloral and multifloral honey exactly serves this purpose. In this paper, the pollen flora of rock bee, Apis dorsata was presented based on ten honey samples. The pollen identified belonged to twenty nine plant species; 40% of the honey samples were unifloral and the floral resource happened to be Citrus limon, Eucalyptus sp., Syzygium cuminii and Helianthus annuus while the remaining 60% honey samples were multifloral. The observations constitute the elementary database on the bee flora of rock bee in Ahmednagar region.