A creature similar to the hummingbird is the bee, which has the tiniest of brains! That small brain can perform incredible feats such as flight, an eye that can see more of the infrared spectrum than we humans, the intelligence to build a nest and exist socially, and the intelligence to gather and process honey.
Nectar contains about 80% water, along with complex sugars. Left in its natural state, nectar would ferment. In order to store the sugars in a usable and efficient state, bees convert the nectar into honey. Honey contains only 14-18% water. Pound for pound, honey provides a much greater energy source than pure nectar. The actual process of transforming the flower nectar into honey requires teamwork. Older workers do the foraging and bring the nectar back to the hive. There, younger hive bees complete the task of turning it into honey.
First, worker bees fly out from the hive in search of nectar-rich flowers. Using its straw-like proboscis, a worker bees drinks the liquid nectar and stores it in a special stomach called the honey stomach. The bee continues to forage, visiting hundreds of flowers, until its honey stomach is full. Within the honey stomach, enzymes break down the complex sugars of the nectar into simpler sugars, which are less prone to crystallization. This process is called inversion.
With a full belly, the worker bee heads back to the hive and regurgitates the already modified nectar for a hive bee. The hive bee ingests the sugary offering and further breaks down the sugars. It then regurgitates the inverted nectar into a cell of the honeycomb.
Now, the hive bees beat their wings furiously, fanning the nectar to evaporate its remaining water content. As the water evaporates, the sugars thicken into honey. Once the honey is finished, the hive bee caps the beeswax cell, sealing the honey into the honeycomb for later consumption. A single worker bee produces only 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. Working cooperatively, thousands of worker bees can produce over 200 pounds of honey for the colony within a year. -
http://insects.about.com/od/antsbeeswasps/f/beesmakehoney.htm
Pollination is the first step in the process of sexual reproduction in plants. In pollination, a male pollen grain is transferred to the female part of a flower, germinates and fertilizes the ovule. All of these steps must occur for a seed to develop. Without pollination, the production of many of the seeds and fruits that we eat would not be possible.
As in all sexually reproducing organisms, mating in plants results in offspring that contain genes from both parents. Unlike animals, plants cannot seek each other out. They must rely on wind, water, or animals to move pollen between plants. Wind is responsible for pollinating many staple crops such as wheat and corn, but many Ontario crops rely heavily or completely on insects for pollination. Bees are the most commonly discussed pollinators, but many other insects and even vertebrates can play a role (see Pollinators).
Insects that visit flowers are in search of pollen and nectar. Most flowers produce nectar just to attract pollinators. The higher the concentration of sugar in the nectar, the more attractive it is to pollinators. Nectar can also contain other useful compounds such as lipids, amino acids, vitamins, and minerals. Pollen is high in protein, carbohydrate, lipids, and vitamins. It is valuable to some adult insects as a food source, and especially to bees looking for food for their young (larvae). A nectary (nectar-producing organ)is usually positioned within the flower so that visitors to the flower have to contact the reproductive organs to access the nectar.
Plants that can self-fertilize (or self-compatible) can still benefit from cross-pollination because it can lead to more or higher quality fruit. In these plants, self-pollination is often an emergency mechanism in case cross-pollination does not occur. Because plants prefer to invest their resources in cross-pollinated offspring, self-pollination often produces fewer fruit ,or fruit that is smaller or misshapen.
All plant reproduction requires that pollen be transmitted to the female organ, or pistil. (The exception is agamospermy, in which a plant produces viable seed without being fertilized.) Pollen is produced by the male organ, called the stamen. The stamen consists of an anther atop a long filament. Pollen grains released by the anther are picked up by visiting insects or the wind. When a pollen grain reaches the female pistil (which may be on the same or a different flower), it germinates on the stigma, forming a pollen tube that grows through the style and into the ovary. The fertilized ovules then develop into seeds.
Flowers may have male or female organs (called imperfect flowers), or both (referred to as perfect flowers). Examples of crops with perfect flowers include apples, cherries and legumes; crops with imperfect flowers include squash, cucumber and corn. These terms should not be confused with those that describe the plant as whole. A species may have individual plants that produce either male or female flowers (dioecious, from the Greek for 'two houses'), or plants that produce both (e.g., hermaphrodite or monoecious, 'one house'). In those species that are monoecious, individual plants may have their male and female functions in separate (imperfect) flowers, in perfect flowers, or they may have two or even all three of the flower types. Monoecious plants may also have sexual functions separated in time. This means that the pollen production and stigma receptivity to the pollen occur at different times. -
http://www.pollinator.ca/bestpractices/flower_anatomy.html
All of which requires some kind of intelligent design for the whole animal / flower relationship to become a reality.
