Bees Actually Bite Plants to Make Them Flower Early – Surprising Scientists

[Michie]

Despite their name, there’s no bumbling in a bumblebee’s movements. They are busy surveying your yard for the tastiest and richest supplies of nectar and pollen.

They’re also biting tiny chunks out of leaves as they go along, but are neither ingesting nor bringing the leaf fragments back to the hive. Instead, like so many gardeners with their pruning sheers, the beesare manipulating flowers into blooming earlier than normal, a discovery that has scientists buzzing.

Between the time of their emergence and the month of April when flowers are plentiful, buff-tailed bumblebees in a Swiss research lab were observed over several trials to prune the leaves of preferred plants while not in flower when the bee colony had been deprived of pollen. This was in contrast to the actions, both in the lab and on the building’s rooftop, of another colony that was not pollen-deprived.


Additionally, they had a profound effect on the plants they pruned. Their nibbling enticed flowers out of a tomato plant a whole month early, and black mustard plants two weeks early.

Continuing their rooftop research, the Swiss beekeeper/scientists found that over the course of early summer, wild bees of two other species began visiting and puncturing the leaves on non-flowering patches of plants.

Continued below.
Bees Actually Bite Plants to Make Them Flower Early – Surprising Scientists

 

[OldWiseGuy]

Despite their name, there’s no bumbling in a bumblebee’s movements. They are busy surveying your yard for the tastiest and richest supplies of nectar and pollen.

They’re also biting tiny chunks out of leaves as they go along, but are neither ingesting nor bringing the leaf fragments back to the hive. Instead, like so many gardeners with their pruning sheers, the beesare manipulating flowers into blooming earlier than normal, a discovery that has scientists buzzing.

Between the time of their emergence and the month of April when flowers are plentiful, buff-tailed bumblebees in a Swiss research lab were observed over several trials to prune the leaves of preferred plants while not in flower when the bee colony had been deprived of pollen. This was in contrast to the actions, both in the lab and on the building’s rooftop, of another colony that was not pollen-deprived.


Additionally, they had a profound effect on the plants they pruned. Their nibbling enticed flowers out of a tomato plant a whole month early, and black mustard plants two weeks early.

Continuing their rooftop research, the Swiss beekeeper/scientists found that over the course of early summer, wild bees of two other species began visiting and puncturing the leaves on non-flowering patches of plants.

Continued below.
Bees Actually Bite Plants to Make Them Flower Early – Surprising Scientists

Orchardists do the same with fruit trees, beating them with a club or wounding them with an ax, to make them blossom and bear fruit.