Well, I suppose you could put on your Queen Bee suit and get out there at first light, do the queen bee hoochy-choochy and lead em all away... then run right back an start dabbin like crazy! :P

But seriously, up here in the north, there has been a severe problem with some kind of mite that gets into hives and kills the whole hive. I've yet to see a honey bee this spring/summer. Only thing I've seen are bumble bees, and they are not to be messed with if ya know whats good for ya. :O

I saw somewhere on a site that some ppl have taken like a cheese cloth and wrapped the bud the night before to prevent comtamination. Sounds like a lot of extra work to me but I suppose it is feasible.

HTH,

Roger
South of Chicago

Cut the blooms you want to use as pollen donor the night before they open or in the morning before the pollen ripens. Put them in a protected area but not an air-conditioned space; like a green-house or garage.

Pollen can be stored for short periods by refrigerating or longer periods by freezing, but it must be kept dry.
Ed

Ed - Thanks for the great tip! My problem the past few days has been missing pistils. Why don't some daylilies - particularly dips - have them on extra hot days? I forgot what you told Ella last year.

Shelli - I just start dabbing early and do my most important crosses first.

Debra

One of my problems is that the pollen isn't dry early so that is when I take alot of my pictures and plan some of my crosses.... and then when I come back to check--it is dried and GONE..

Shelli,
Early mornings get pretty hectic. I make my first round with that first cup of coffee to see whats new and if something is ripe to photograph. I will dead-head and prune those plants first and do the photography.

If you get out early enough, before the sun comes up, you get beautiful colors in the indirect light. Especially the pinks and purples. All this before the pollen ripens!

Then it's time to hybridize. I focus on the tets first, because they are much more temperature sensitive. I do the dips last. I do occasionally have to wave off the little black pollen bees or the bumble bees, but I usually don't go to the trouble to collect or save pollen. You have to use common sense; look for the anther that has the most undisturbed pollen to use or pass up that bloom. Even if a bee has took some of the pollen, there's usually still plenty left. I think there's probably enough pollen on an anther to pollinate 100 flowers, if used judiciously. If the pollen is important enough, you can come up with a way to protect it. I protect blooms from rain moreso than bees. You can buy these little green stakes that are about 4 feet long. I use a piece of copper 12 gauge wire to suspend a plastic grocery bag over the bloom. If the wind is blowing hard enough, put a twisty around the bag below the bloom. That would also work for bee's I think. Improvise. Good luck!

Hi Debra,
I honestly don't know why flowers don't have pistils. Since tets have more chromosomes for everything, it's logical that they would suffer with the problem less. I tend to see it with the first few blooms on a plant and then I start getting pistils. So far hasn't been a problem as I usually get more pods on each plant than I should! ;0)
Ed

Shelli pick the bloom the night before it opens or in the very early a.m. and put the bloom in the refrigerator. It will be open the next morning and the cycling of the frig. will dry the pollen and it will be ready to use. The pollen will remain viable in the frig. for several days.

Brooke

Brooke, I tried that and it didnt work for me. The bloom was a soggy mess by the next morning. If I would just leave the bloom on the counter until the next day, would be pollen still be viable?

Did you put the bloom in a small container of water? My blooms in the frig. stay fresh for two days - they look like they just opened even on day two. I put the petiole of the bloom in a wine type glass with the petiole sitting in the water but none of the petals. If the bloom gets soggy and collapses on the pollen, then no, the pollen is wasted.

A bloom picked in the a.m., left on the counter all day would be a limp bloom by the end of the day. If I place a bloom on the counter in a glass of water, it stays crisp until evening but the next a.m. very soggy.

Hope it works for you because it cuts down on the number of times you have to gather and store pollen for future use. Pollen stored in the frig. should be viable for a week, or so they say. I've only used it for three days so can't really testify to the week viability number.

Hi Shelli,

I do something similar to Brooke. I have a lot of fog and bees. Sometimes the fog will ruin the pollen and sometimes the bees get it. I pick an UNBLOOMED bud the evening before and place it in a dish on my kitchen counter with the end just in the water keeping the rest of the bud out of the water. It will open overnight and the pollen will be dry before any of the pollen outside dries. This gets me a head start in pollinating for the day(especially since I have to get to my "real" job once I'm done).

Charlie

OK, but excuse the stupid question but don't the bees mess up your crosses by coming along with pollen they have brushed up against somewhere and then adding it to the flower (pod parent) you have just crossed and getting no name pollen added to your mix?

When you pollinate the stigma, it is covered with the pollen you placed on it. Basically there is no room for additional pollen. The pollen stays on so good, you can even see it the next day in the limp and soggy bloom.

Brooke

Our gardener worked for an agricultural experiment station for ten years, and he tells me that they used onion skin paper, twisted to form a cap, as a cover for a flower, once pollinated. I plan to try that next summer when it gets too hot for aluminum foil caps.

Another trick is to pull off all the stamens from the pollinated flower. The bees will not mess with it, if it doesn't have pollen available.

If the pollination is important, cover the pistil with foil or something. Sometimes I use scotch tape and bend it over the end of the pistil, especially for rain caps. A couple of days ago I made a cross and it was trying to rain, so I cut an old scape off, fairly small diameter, cut about three inches off, folded over the end and slipped it over the pollinated pistil. Worked just fine! Cut it and the end of the bloom off the next day. The bad thing about using tape is cleaning it up the day after.
Ed

I read that the pollen tube grows to the ovary in three hours. Each seed can only be pollinated once, so the stigma needs to be protected for only an hour or so to give the desired pollen an effective headstart.

I am going to try the little paper stickers, like people use for garage sale prices. Wrapped around a toothpick, sticky side out, and the end bit folded over just 1/8 inch, they make a perfect and stable little paper tube hat, and biodegradable. The stickiness on the outside makes them easy to handle, kinda hard to drop as I fold, and after handling it's not so sticky it would trap a bee. They will be light weight, and on a windy day might blow off but I figure they will usually stay on an hour, anyway.

If they do blow off, I could try the sticky part on the inside and very lightly press it together on the style. I'd wonder if it could stick to my freshly applied pollen, though, and reduce my success.

This way, I will not have to go around and pick up or pick off little bits of aluminum foil. Bleh.