Wild Bees Make Honeybees Better Pollinators
How?
By sexual harrassment!
Wild bees behave like the male audience of Girls Gone Wild - obnoxious and aggressive. So, the honeybees keep running away from them - from flower to flower.
Winners: Flowers.
Seriously:
Compared to honeybees, wild bees did not contribute much directly to crop pollination. But on farms where wild bees were abundant, honeybees were much more effective in pollinating flowers and generating seeds, Greenleaf found.There appear to be two reasons for that. Male wild bees, probably looking for mates, will latch onto worker honeybees, which are sterile females, causing them to move from one flower to another. Secondly, female wild bees appear to "dive bomb" honeybees, forcing them to move. Frequent movement between flowers spreads pollen around more effectively.
"Divebomb!"
Comments
Bee sure to pass that link and explanation around to Bushwell. Sounds like it could contribute to a very interesting twist in her "flower porn" story.
Posted by: Aerik | September 24, 2006 8:37 PM