Wednesday 4 November 2015

Blossom must never fly from bee to bee to bee

'The King and I' need to have a conversation about the birds and the bees because he's got it so, so wrong. Here's his justification for polygyny:

A girl must be like a blossom with honey for just one man
A man must be like a honey bee and gather all he can!
To fly from blossom to blossom a honey bee must be free
But blossom must never fly from bee to bee to bee!

I can't imagine Blossom or any other woman agreeing with him, but the irony is that bees practice another form of polygamy – polyandry! Each queen gathers all the males she can and those lucky fellows that consummate the act promptly drop dead (read - It's raining men).

And it's just a small point but those bees that 'gather all they can' - they're female!

The King of Siam in the 1956 movie musical clearly knew nothing about bees, but now it appears he was wrong about the flowers too.

It's well known that flowers do their utmost to attract visitors by looking pretty, smelling nice and offering a sip from the honey pot. But they also do something else to help them 'fly' from bee to bee to bee – they use drugs!

Memory-enhancing substances in the nectar can improve the bees recall about where the flowers are located and a good dose of caffeine to boot, guarantees those bees will be dancing like demons when they get back to their hive. Bees dance to tell the rest of the colony about good food sources and the more vigorous the dancing the greater the eagerness for other bees to pay a visit to young Blossom.

So far from having honey for just one bee, the flowers in effect 'fly from bee to bee to bee'. Fair enough, but there's a downside to Blossom's promiscuity – infectious diseases! Every tongue probing the flower nectaries risks leaving or picking up a nasty infection, and not just from other honey bees. Bumble bees can also transmit diseases like nosema to honey bees visiting the same flower, and vice versa.

It's not normally a problem; bees have been visiting flowers for millions of years, but if disease carrying bumble bees or honey bees are bought into an area, local infection rates can spike. This is particularly so when flowers are scarce because the remaining few get many more visitors.

There's a simple remedy; plant more flower. That way each flower will have fewer visitors and harbour less disease, and even more nectar for those that do call.

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