Flowers and Bees

Relationship between Flowers and Bees

Flowers and bees - Bees and flowers have a mutualistic relationship as well. Bees get the nectar they need to make honey by traveling between flowers. The bee brings pollen from one plant to another, resulting in pollination. This is nothing but a case of pollination .

How do bees get pollen from flowers:

This is mutual interest. The plant needs to get the pollen on the flowers (in order to pollinate other flowers of the same species), the bee needs to take the pollen (in order to use it as a protein source). Obviously it’s not a matter of planning but co-evolution between the two species.

There are different ways in which the bee may “communicate” with the flower to trigger the flower to release pollen, these vary between species (of flowers and bees). On some cases, it is the frequency of the bees’ wings flapping that could trigger that release (thus only working for certain species of bees), on others, it’s a small electrostatic charge exchange as the bee approaches the flower. The exact mechanism varies, and frankly, I think not all of it is fully known to us yet.

The bee then directs the pollen to its pollen baskets - the area of its rear legs. If you watch a foraging hive for a while, you can look at the returning bees with full pollen baskets. The bees carry the pollen wherever they need it - the hive for social bees, the place where the eggs are laid for solitary bees.

For honeybees, the pollen is stored in cells in the hive, typically close to the brood chamber (so the nursing bees can consume nectar and pollen in order to feed the larvae and the queen without traveling too far from the brood chamber to get those).

How do bees choose which flowers to collect the pollen from

Bees would typically forage on the flowers they can find. Each bee tends to develop the “taste” for a specific species of flowers, that type of loyalty makes the pollination more efficient (and in turn, encourages the plant to attract and reward pollinators, thus encouraging the co-evolution). How bees find the flowers in the first place is a fascinating and complicated process, involving color, scent, pheromones left by previous bees on the flower (either as “come here to feed” or “I was already here and took what this flower has to offer, go elsewhere” type of message).

For honeybees, those returning to the hive use the famous bee-dance to inform the other bees where to go (as in “fly 30 degrees right of the Sun for 900 meters”). The bees that follow the dance catch the scent of the flowers from the dancing bees and look for that scent once they arrive at the described location.