Im aware of the fact that bees are important for the world but id love to know exactly why or how
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According to what I’ve read, about 1/3 of our food supply is pollinated by bees. If the plants are not pollinated, they won’t produce the food.
I’m certain they provide many ecological advantages.
The most considered would be that of pollination. There are many plants that do not self-pollinate. They create seeds that must be carried to a different area if the species of plant wants to move, or propagate, or cross pollinate with different plants.
That’s where the bees come in. When they land on the plant in order to collect nectar, they inadvertently become carriers for pollen.
Not to mention honey is pretty great.
Bees are pollinators. They’re responsible for pollinating about 80% of all flowering plants. They move pollen between plants which allows plants to reproduce.
This includes a lot of fruit and vegetable plants. No bees = no pollination = food shortage from lack of fruits and vegetables.
Bees pollinate flowers. It is how flowering plants exchange genetic material, it is necessary before the plant can produce fruit, seeds, or offspring. If you plant a garden full of tomatoes, peppers, squash, apples, peaches and berries, but nothing pollinates it, you get zero harvest.
Originally, North and South America had no honeybees, and indigenous people were still able to grow all of the crops above, because there are many types of insects that pollinate flowers. But bees are unique in that many thousands of them nest in one hive. Large scale farms don’t offer much space for other insects to lay eggs and mature through the early stages of life. Large scale farmers actually hire travelling bee keepers who bring truckloads of bees to pollinate a specific crop. Those bees might pollinate oranges in Florida in March, then apples in Oregon in April, and travel all over the country. This won’t work with any other insect.
Bees (including wild species, not just honeybees) pollinate about 80% of all flowering plants. Fruits and vegetables are flowering plants. Without bees, a lot of food plants wouldn’t be able to reproduce because pollen wouldn’t get where it needs to go.
You know how, in humans and other familiar animals, to get offspring, it takes a sperm from one parent, and an egg from another, and something has to happen to get those two parts in the same place? Well, plants are the same way.
Plants have what we call male and female parts, often both on the same plant. The male part is what produces the kind of gamete— sex cell—, like a sperm, that moves around in the world, and the female part makes the kind that stays put (more or less) until it’s reached by and combined with the other.
In some kinds of plant, the mechanism is (conceptually but not anatomically) simple: the male parts of the plant make a ton of mobile-type gametes, called pollen, and toss it out into the wind, and just sort of hope it lands on a stationary-type gamete. The female parts of plants tend to have mechanisms for catching, grabbing, and pulling in pollen, and, combined with the huge amounts floating around in the air, that tends to work pretty well.
But there’s another mechanism that’s popular with plants, which is to get an *animal* to deliver pollen. This is what flowers are for; insects crawl or fly into them to eat a sugary liquid, and pollen, which is sticky in these species of plant, well, sticks to them. Then, when they crawl into another flower, hopefully on a different plant of the same species, it rubs off, and gets pulled down into the female parts of the flower to fertilize the stationary gamete there. Plants often wait until that happens before they direct nutrients into producing an offspring-package, like a seed or fruit. If there’s no viable offspring, after all, those nutrients would be wasted.
Bees are an animal that pollinate a lot of flowers. They’re not the only one, not by a long shot, but they’re the one that’s easiest for humans to manipulate, because they come in big packages called colonies or hives. A honeybee colony has something like ten to fifty thousand bees in it, and it’s smaller than a refrigerator. You can move it from place to place if you know what you’re doing. So if there are a lot of flowers you want to make sure get pollinated,— and they’re from a compatible species of plant— one thing you can do is plop a bunch of beehives down nearby, and let the bees do their thing. You might want to do that to make sure that, say, your apple trees’ flowers get pollinated, so they have lots of offspring-packages (apples) to fill with nutrients.
You know how, in humans and other familiar animals, to get offspring, it takes a sperm from one parent, and an egg from another, and something has to happen to get those two parts in the same place? Well, plants are the same way.
Plants have what we call male and female parts, often both on the same plant. The male part is what produces the kind of gamete— sex cell—, like a sperm, that moves around in the world, and the female part makes the kind that stays put (more or less) until it’s reached by and combined with the other.
In some kinds of plant, the mechanism is (conceptually but not anatomically) simple: the male parts of the plant make a ton of mobile-type gametes, called pollen, and toss it out into the wind, and just sort of hope it lands on a stationary-type gamete. The female parts of plants tend to have mechanisms for catching, grabbing, and pulling in pollen, and, combined with the huge amounts floating around in the air, that tends to work pretty well.
But there’s another mechanism that’s popular with plants, which is to get an *animal* to deliver pollen. This is what flowers are for; insects crawl or fly into them to eat a sugary liquid, and pollen, which is sticky in these species of plant, well, sticks to them. Then, when they crawl into another flower, hopefully on a different plant of the same species, it rubs off, and gets pulled down into the female parts of the flower to fertilize the stationary gamete there. Plants often wait until that happens before they direct nutrients into producing an offspring-package, like a seed or fruit. If there’s no viable offspring, after all, those nutrients would be wasted.
Bees are an animal that pollinate a lot of flowers. They’re not the only one, not by a long shot, but they’re the one that’s easiest for humans to manipulate, because they come in big packages called colonies or hives. A honeybee colony has something like ten to fifty thousand bees in it, and it’s smaller than a refrigerator. You can move it from place to place if you know what you’re doing. So if there are a lot of flowers you want to make sure get pollinated,— and they’re from a compatible species of plant— one thing you can do is plop a bunch of beehives down nearby, and let the bees do their thing. You might want to do that to make sure that, say, your apple trees’ flowers get pollinated, so they have lots of offspring-packages (apples) to fill with nutrients.
Plants can’t get up and go find a mate. They rely on other things, such as wind, insects or animals to pick up their pollen and carry it to other plants.
Bees pretty much exclusively feed on pollen, so they carry it with them plant to plant.
The importance of bees in the role is overstated but bees do a good enough job of ensuring high fertilization rates, which translates into high fruiting rates, that it can make sense to pull back on the insecticide despite pest damage.
Plants can’t get up and go find a mate. They rely on other things, such as wind, insects or animals to pick up their pollen and carry it to other plants.
Bees pretty much exclusively feed on pollen, so they carry it with them plant to plant.
The importance of bees in the role is overstated but bees do a good enough job of ensuring high fertilization rates, which translates into high fruiting rates, that it can make sense to pull back on the insecticide despite pest damage.
You know how, in humans and other familiar animals, to get offspring, it takes a sperm from one parent, and an egg from another, and something has to happen to get those two parts in the same place? Well, plants are the same way.
Plants have what we call male and female parts, often both on the same plant. The male part is what produces the kind of gamete— sex cell—, like a sperm, that moves around in the world, and the female part makes the kind that stays put (more or less) until it’s reached by and combined with the other.
In some kinds of plant, the mechanism is (conceptually but not anatomically) simple: the male parts of the plant make a ton of mobile-type gametes, called pollen, and toss it out into the wind, and just sort of hope it lands on a stationary-type gamete. The female parts of plants tend to have mechanisms for catching, grabbing, and pulling in pollen, and, combined with the huge amounts floating around in the air, that tends to work pretty well.
But there’s another mechanism that’s popular with plants, which is to get an *animal* to deliver pollen. This is what flowers are for; insects crawl or fly into them to eat a sugary liquid, and pollen, which is sticky in these species of plant, well, sticks to them. Then, when they crawl into another flower, hopefully on a different plant of the same species, it rubs off, and gets pulled down into the female parts of the flower to fertilize the stationary gamete there. Plants often wait until that happens before they direct nutrients into producing an offspring-package, like a seed or fruit. If there’s no viable offspring, after all, those nutrients would be wasted.
Bees are an animal that pollinate a lot of flowers. They’re not the only one, not by a long shot, but they’re the one that’s easiest for humans to manipulate, because they come in big packages called colonies or hives. A honeybee colony has something like ten to fifty thousand bees in it, and it’s smaller than a refrigerator. You can move it from place to place if you know what you’re doing. So if there are a lot of flowers you want to make sure get pollinated,— and they’re from a compatible species of plant— one thing you can do is plop a bunch of beehives down nearby, and let the bees do their thing. You might want to do that to make sure that, say, your apple trees’ flowers get pollinated, so they have lots of offspring-packages (apples) to fill with nutrients.
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