What Brings the Bees? (BioE80 Spr 2015)
May 27, 2015 • 12:34 PM UTC
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em
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As I was walking around the BioE building terrace, I noticed a bush with small purple flowers. Attracted by the vividness of the petal colors, I reached down to pick one off for closer examination. However, before even touching the plant, a bee two inches away from the flower stirred and I quickly retreated. Once more, I attempted to pluck a flower with the same unsuccessful result and realized that the bush was infested with bees. Driven even more by the curiosity of how a small flower on the second floor landing of a location could attract such a large crowd, I tried once more and managed to extract a tiny petal from the bush to examine under the foldoscope. This is what I found.
The first image shows the texture of the petal – it has a scale like consistency and is rich in color to draw the attention of insects in flight. The second image is closer to the core of the flower – this is approximately where the bees seemed to be hovering. We can see that there is some pollen scattered on either side, demonstrating that the bees are indeed pollinating the flowers as a result of their infestation. From the number of bees and the duration of their stay, it seems that these flowers have more to offer than just a visual or fragrant appeal, and must also be a rich source of nectar, which could be accessed through the long narrow structure in this photo. This leads to the question of what environments drive flowers to develop more methods of attracting bees – whether it is the vividness of their petals, fragrance, or amount of nectar they produce?
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