Pollination: Bees

A bee flies by you. Instead of ignoring her or avoiding her in attempt to evade her stinger, stop to admire the busy little bee.

First of all, a bee will only sting you for protection. Losing her stinger will kill a bee, so if you don’t bother her, she won’t bother you.

Secondly, the world would be a very different place without bees. Many plants rely on bees to pollinate them. It is thanks to bees that we have fruit, vegetables, grains, and other plant foods.

But why do bees pollinate plants? How do bees pollinate a flower? How does the bees pollinating a plant help continue the plant species’ growth? And, lastly, how does this benefit humans?

Okay, so let’s answer the first question; why do bees pollinate plants?

Well, bees, as you may know, make the pollen from plants into honey. This is their food. They also make it into royal jelly, which they feed a larva that will become the next queen bee. The royal jelly is actually what makes a queen bee--well, a queen bee!

Anyway, back to the subject. So bees make pollen into their food; honey. But what about the second question; how does a bee pollinate a flower?

Well, a bee will first land on a flower. She will crawl inside and, when she does this, she knocks some of the pollen off of the anther. This pollen sticks to her body. She flies out and continues to collect more pollen for her colony.

Pollen does not resemble honey in appearance (or taste) at all. It is a light yellow powder.

So, what about the next question; how does the bees pollinating a plant help continue the plant species’ growth?

Okay, so let’s look back on the answer to the previous question. So the bee will crawl inside and knock the anther. What is an anther?

Well, the anther are tall (but usually more or less small to what meets the human eye), thin stems that have small oval balls at their tips. Inside of these, there is pollen. And inside of each tiny grain of pollen are two microscopic sperm cells.

You might be thinking, Sperm cells? In a flower?

Well, the truth is, flower can be three different genders; male, female, or both. A male flower has the anthers, a male part, which creates the pollen. A female flower has an ovary, a female part, which create the seeds. A flower of both of those genders has both male and female parts.
So, back to what we were talking about.

When the pollen falls from the anther and onto the bee, it, of course, brings the sperm cells with it. The pollen clings to the bee.

Now the bee travels to another flower. Let’s just say that this flower is a female. The bee crawls into the female flower to check for pollen. Female flowers, having no anther, do not create pollen. But, when the bee crawls inside, some of the pollen, sperm cells and all, gets caught on the sticky stigma, another female flower part.

The bee flies off in search of more pollen. The pollen then goes down to the ovary and meets the egg inside of the female flower (yes, female flowers have eggs). When the sperm cells and eggs are in contact, they bind together an eventually create a seed. This seed will either be released by the flower or, when the flower dies, will take its place.

Now for the last question; how does this benefit humans?

Well, all plant foods come from flowers, as I said earlier. Every single living thing depends on plants. Herbivores eat the plants directly. Carnivores eat the herbivores. There would be no herbivores if not for plants, and therefor no carnivores. And, therefor, no life.

To get a better understanding of this, let’s look at a world with no plants.

No grass grows on the ground. No trees reach for the sky with long,finger-like branches. No vegetation peppering the earth. No fragrance of flowers drifting in the breeze. But that isn’t even the half of it.

No animals or humans are on Earth anymore, either. There is no life on Earth. Not plants or animals.

So, we all depend on plants. From the smallest bacterium eating the food stuck in your teeth, to the tallest giraffe grazing the leaves in the treetops. From the biggest tiger stalking its prey to the smallest mouse munching on insects.

And we all depend on bees and the other busy pollinators; butterflies, wasps, and hummingbirds. And we can all thank them for the beauty of the wonderful Earth that we live on.

-KittyLover8
© 2012