Honey forensics – pollen in honey from St Petersburg

May 31, 2017 • 9:25 AM UTC

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Manu Prakash

I am a faculty at Stanford and run the Prakash Lab at Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University. Foldscope community is at the heart of our Frugal Science movement - and I can not tell you how proud I am of this community and grassroots movement. Find our work here: http://prakashlab.stanford.edu

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Today, I had a really fun tea session with the principle and teachers at school number 30, in the heart of St. Petersburg. We ran a foldscope workshop for students from several schools in the area (documentation coming soon).
While drinking my tea with honey, I decided to look at the honey under a foldscope.

Now; I was reallly intrigued by two things:
1) the long pencil like crystals; usually I see sugar crystals to have the same aspect ratio – but not clearlybthe case here. Also, is honey supposed to have micro-crystals if it’s pure?
2) secondly, I was able to find two kind of pollen grains. This gets me very excited; because it might be possible to find where the honey was collected by the bee itself.

Just so you are wondering, this is the brand of honey that was served. The waiter was kind to bring me the whole box. I can’t read Russian; but maybe you can help me identify this brand.

Offcourse, the waiter enjoyed the spectacle and watching honey for the first time. He was so happy!! Clearly not expecting a microscopy lesson on the table.
I am now on the quest to find which flower this honey might be from. On the bottle, it is claimed that the flower is this one: