It cannot be denied that the honey bee is the greatest pollinating machine when it comes to agriculture. Their large perennial colonies can be moved to wherever they are needed and they can communicate direction and distance from the hive to nectar sources. Honey bees also practice flower fidelity which makes them very efficient pollinators. Flower fidelity is the habit of concentrating on one specific species of flower when gathering and transferring pollen even though the insect is attracted to a large variety of flowers.
Honey bees are also excellent at finding the most abundant and sweetest source of nectar near the colony. Scouts communicate information about the source to their brood with what is called “dance language”. Even in the darkness of the hive, the direction in which a bee is dancing can be easily followed by other worker bees and the odor of the nectar that the dancer provides gives the followers a clue as to what kind of flower the dancer has found.
HOW BEE POLLINATION WORKS
Pollination is the transfer of pollen grains between the male germ cell of a plant (anther) and the female reproductive system (stigma) in seed plants. It is a vital process for both plants and humans; without it plants would not be able to reproduce and crop bearing plants would not be fertilized enough for necessary food yields.