Why bees pollinate flowers

Bumble bees are known to nest in abandoned rodent burrows and feral honey bees are known to nest in tree hollows. Bees use a variety of materials to build their nests. Most bees line their nest cells with a waxy material they produce themselves, but others use pieces of leaves, small pebbles mixed with resin from tree sap, or mud to form the cells in which they lay their eggs.

Many bee species are solitary each female produces offspring in her own nest with only one generation of bees produced per year. However, other species nest communally several females share a nest or have elaborate social structures with division of labor within the colony usually with a single queen and many workers.

These kinds of bees produce multiple generations per year. This means that bees that produce multiple generations each year need food resources pollen and nectar across most of the growing season to produce strong colonies. Providing plants in a landscape with overlapping bloom periods will help these bees survive and prosper. View our information about selecting plants for overlapping bloom and appeal to pollinators. Bee communities, both wild and managed, have been declining over the last half century as pesticide use in agricultural and urban areas increased.

Changes in land use have resulted in a patchy distribution of food and nesting resources. Concerned bee researchers recently met to discuss the current pollinator status in North America and to publish a report about it.

Next Photo. The most important thing that bees do is pollinate. Pollination is needed for plants to reproduce, and so many plants depend on bees or other insects as pollinators. When a bee collects nectar and pollen from the flower of a plant, some pollen from the stamens—the male reproductive organ of the flower—sticks to the hairs of her body.

She has coarse bristles on her front legs to help her do this. You can also see the shiny smooth plate on this bee's face that helps her slide her face between the flower's petals to collect nectar.

Other native bees can perform a special kind of pollination called 'Buzz Pollination '. These bees vibrate the flowers, making the pollen shoot out of little capsules. Some wildflowers, such as Solanum and Hibbertia , require Buzz Pollination to produce seeds.

It is important to protect the diversity of our native bee species, so that we will always have bees to Buzz Pollinate our wildflowers! Pollinators for our Food Crops For some major food crops such as wheat, rice, corn and oats, wind carries the pollen that pollinates the plant. However, many of our other food crops rely on insects especially bees and other animals for pollination, including: -- apples, pears, peaches, melons and passionfruit; -- pumpkins, zucchini, avocados and cucumbers; -- brazil nuts, macadamia nuts, cashews and almonds; -- canola and sunflower; -- coffee, coconut, mustard and cotton.

Just one species, the European Honeybee, Apis mellifera , is currently used for large-scale commercial crop pollination in Australia.

This is a serious problem, because European Honeybees are under threat by many pests and diseases. If or when Australia is invaded by the devastating Varroa mite, we will lose a large proportion of our European Honeybees. However, for some food crops, Australia's 1, native bee species can be better crop pollinators than European Honeybees. For instance, many solitary native bees carry large amounts of dry pollen on their furry bodies, making them particularly efficient pollinators.

Our social native Stingless Bees have a short flight range that helps keep them within a target crop or inside a crop greenhouse. And Blue Banded Bees and Carpenter Bees can perform the special Buzz Pollination technique needed for crops such as tomatoes, capsicums and blueberries. A Bluebanded Bee Buzz Pollinating a tomato flower inside a greenhouse.

European Honeybees cannot perform Buzz Pollination. The best result is achieved when European Honeybees and a variety of native bee species are used together to pollinate crops. So it is vital that we learn how to make better use of our wild pollinators for crop pollination in Australia. Major research programs on this subject are currently underway in New South Wales and South Australia.