RELIABILITY OF POLLEN ANALYSIS IN HONEY

The legal conformity of the declaration of type or origin of honey can be checked by its pollen distribution. In the working group ''pollenw orkshop'' 14 collaborative trials of varying difficulties were carried out to determine the relative amounts of 3-6 pollen types in blossom honey. The experimental procedure followed those described in the arti cle ''Methods of Mellisopalynology, International Commission for Bee B otany of IUBS''. The evaluation of the results from light microscopy s tudies in the levels of 100, 300, 500, 1000 pollens was carried out us ing the ''Amtliche Sammlung von Untersuchungsverfahren, 35 LMBG.'' The decrease of the scattering in the analytical results with increasing pollen counts depends of the difficulty in determining the honey speci es. In the count range used in this study the decrease of the reproduc ibility with increasing number of pollens counted can be described by a power law. This also applies to comparability, except for values of honey with pollen species that are hard to differentiate. This method is well suited to quantify the fraction of defined pollen species. For the classification into frequency classes at least 300 pollen have to be counted, for more exact statements of the relative amounts 500-100 0 pollen counts are necessary, depending on the stabilisation of the v alues.