Bees Delivering Pollen Makes For More Plants To Grow And Multiply

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These bees delivering pollen can reveal how they can be different from honeybees and also helps unravel a mystery that is often ignored yet essential to agriculture and even for human survival.

Bees delivering pollen help with plant propagation

Unknown to many there are certain bees known as buzz pollinators and are the only ones who can access a secret stash of special pollen hidden deep inside the male part or anthers of flowers and is responsible for allowing bees to pollinate plants to bear fruit. This cannot be done by honeybees.

Buzz pollination may be a bit difficult to monitor but it actually does pose a great risk as pollinators may stand a chance of losing the valuable gametes while they reach in to the deep recesses of the anthers.

“The flower is almost like playing hard to get,” says Anne Leonard, a biologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, who studies buzz pollination. “It’s intriguing, because these buzz-pollinated plants ask for a huge energy investment from the bees, but don’t give much back.”

Accidental hosts

Bumblebees have actually been called ‘accidental hosts’ due to the nature of their work where pollination can be the least of their concerns. They are on the hunt mainly for two basic reasons- to drink nectar so they can have enough to power flight and gather as much protein for their bodies.

In the process, while the bumblebees feed, flowers eject the pollen gathered and attaches it to the bumblebees’ skin which follows the bees from flower to flower. It then gets dropped and the process is continued so on and so forth.

Buzz pollinators activate when bees bite into the long anthers and leave bite marks called bee kisses and the bee contract their muscles that causes the plant to vibrate vigorously. This process is called sonication.

The induced vibration then causes the flower to shake up the valuable pollen from within.

Pollination is essential for agriculture

Chances are you’ve tasted and enjoyed cranberries, blueberries and peppers. These plants allow for rely heavily on bees pollinating in order for them to reproduce and yield more fruit to feed on.

But while bees have been with humans from the beginning of time, science is just only able to unlock some, if not many, of the secrets that make bees one of the most important creatures on earth.

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