Imagine yourself on a sunny day in a meadow. You’re surrounded by sunflowers, wildflowers, and dandelions.
The air is fragrant with the smell of ripe blossoms and noisy with the buzzing of bees. Thousands of them are hard at work all over the place. They’re gathering nectar and pollen for the hive and also spreading pollen from plant to plant.
The color and scent of flowers attract bees and other insects. Pollen is the powdery yellowish substance inside flower blossoms. It contains male reproductive cells. When a bee lands on a flower, pollen sticks to the hairs on its body. When it flies to the next flower, the pollen sticks to that flower’s female cells. This joining of male and female cells is called fertilization. Without fertilization, new plants or flowers could not grow.
Meanwhile, the nectar a bee sucks up with its tongue is used for making honey. A bee delivers that nectar to the hive. Then it flies right back out again to get more. Honeybees visit between 60,000 and 90,000 flowers to collect enough nectar to make just a thimbleful of honey. There’s a reason people say “busy as a bee”!
