[Pollinator] Counting pollen?

[Peter Bernhardt]

Dear Colleagues:

My university may have some extra funding to buy equipment to be shared by
more than one laboratory in the Department of Biology at Saint Louis
University.  What Dr. Meier and I need desperately is a device that will
count the number of pollen grains in a sample.  The sample of pollen would
come from two sources.

1) Contents of an anther and/or one chamberl (sac) in an anther.

2)   Pollen smear or load on a pollinator.

Obviously, the sample must be homogenized first to separate grains and
remove or disperse glue-like lipids but that's another story.  Has anyone
done this sort of work and could recommend a counter by model and
manufacturer?  I think we need some sort of Coulter Counter (say the type
used to count blood corpuscles) or possible some sort of device with flow
cytometry.   How do you honeybee researchers record the average number of
pollen grains on a hind leg as a corbicular load?   When dealing with
pollen, of course, we are dealing with particles ranging in size from 10 -
100 microns.  No, I'm not going to try to measure those smaller grains of
the Boraginaceae that are about the size of fat, rod-shaped bacteria.

A fast answer would be most appreciated.  We don't have a lot of time to
press our case.

Sincerely, Peter Bernhardt
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