The Pollen Shaker
After trying most everything else, this is the device I found most helpful in collecting pollen.
This small device serves as both a pollen collector and a sieve to remove the unwanted plant parts. It has two aluminum compartments with a stainless steel screen in between and an air tight plastic lid for each.
You just nip off the ripe, or nearly ripe male flower bunches directly off the stalk and drop them directly into the top section of the pollen shaker.
You then close the lid and put the pail in a warm & dry place. Give it a good shake every day or so and the pollen will fall through the screen onto the square of parchment paper under the screen. The parchment paper is secured in place by the second black plastic lid on the bottom section of the pail.
The net result, after a week or so will be a nice pile of yellow pollen sitting on the parchment paper. This pic is after two days, by the end of the week the entire parchment paper was yellow.
I rolled a bunch of qtip swabs in the pollen for later use and finally just dumped the rest of the “Yellow Gold” into a small ziploc bag. After drying, the whole batch went into the freezer for storage.
This worked much better overall than my attempt at bagging branches or putting cut branches in a jar of water and collecting the droppings. It was a cleaner process because both of the plastic lids seal very tightly and, since I dropped the pollen sacks directly into the pail as I cut them from the branch, there was minimal handling involved. After each use just put the whole rig in the dish washer to sanitize!
The Pollen Shaker I bought on the AmZone is currently out of stock and I don’t like the look of the all-plastic one they are offering. The black plastic lids seemed to be statically attractive to the pollen, the aluminum body wasn’t. The search terms seem to be “Pollen Shaker” or “Pollen Pail”
Amazon.com : Plastic Pollen Shaker 4.5" X 3.25" Plant Bud Dry Sift Keif Extractor : Home & Kitchen
Regards,
-Grouchy
PS, Hat Tip to @Gpaw(?) or whoever first suggested this device to me…