Wow! the most important thing a bee does. Without bees our lives would be very different, food would be scarce.
It matters little if that bee is a honey bee or a native bee one of the biggest and most important jobs is that of pollination.
The best pollinators are honey bees. it is said that of all plants, around 80% need pollination, of those 80% rely on bee pollinators.
A bee has adapted so amazingly to be able to gather food and do the job of pollination so well.
It can have a tongues as long as 2.5cm as well as short tongues that can pierce the body of a flower to get to nectar. They have developed hairy bodies and special pollen baskets to collect and transfer pollen from flower to flower and then back to their hive. A naturalist Karl Von Frisch showed bees could distinguish 4 colours Yellow, (orange and yellow green), blue green, blue (purple and violet) and ultraviolet.
A bee by entering a plant will start to be covered with powdery pollen that as she moves inside the flower drops some of that pollen on the mail parts of the flower thus pollinating. some plants have a male and female flower and the bee must visit both.
The bottom line is that plants pollinated by a bee show better crops and healthier fruit!
