flowers

Bee Mine: Pollinator Love Stories

The world of pollinators and flowers is full of love and heartbreak. For Valentine’s Day week, we’ve come up with some tales of romance to share: male honey bees that explode upon mating; hawkmoths that don’t pull their weight in the relationship; what happens when humans meddle with pollination; and more! Follow us on social media @PollinateTufts for daily updates ❤️

Bumble bees (*Bombus impatiens*) are in love with goldenrods.

Love is in the air …. and pollen – Jessie Thuma
On a crisp autumn morning, the bumble bee awakes at first light,
She suns herself at the entrance to her nest and prepares to take flight.

From her nest below the ground, she sets out through the meadow.
What flower will she choose first? Blue or purple or yellow?

She’s an early riser, and has her pick of flowers.
But she will wait for that special bouquet that holds her in its power.

As she flies between the trees,
She catches a sweet scent carried by the breeze.

A patch of goldenrod lit by the mid-morning sun,
Stalks of yellow flowers enticing bees with tasty pollen.

The worker slows to land, taking stock of her workplace,
The goldenrod welcomes her, flowers opening like a warm embrace.

As she moves from plant to plant her baskets fill with pollen,
But she leaves a little behind at each plant, setting seed for future blossom.

Flowers take the shape best suited to their companion bee,
And in return bees drop pollen between plants in a pollination jubilee.

Some flowers are so perfectly shaped that only a bumble bee can reach the pollen inside,
And for these plants the worker sings a sweet buzzing song coaxing the petals to open wide.

Bumble bees are loyal and will visit the same patch of flowers for weeks on end,
Once they are enticed to try the reward, that flower becomes a bee’s best friend.

The worker leaves when she can carry no more,
But she will be back tomorrow—that is for sure.

A honey bee drone. His huge eyes help him
find a queen to mate with, his only purpose in life! (PC: Karen Johns, Flickr)

The tragic love of a honey bee drone – Isaac Weinberg
Male honey bees–known as drones–have only one purpose: reproduction. They leave the nest in the spring and summer, using their massive eyes to tirelessly search for a queen to mate with. With each hive producing hundreds of drones, but only one or two queens, most drones fail to find a mate. Eventually, these unlucky males are barred from reentering the hive, and die within a few days, cold and alone. For the lucky few that find a mate, however, love is bittersweet. The male projects his love with such force that his reproductive organs explode with a loud audible “pop,” killing the lucky bee. Thus, for the drone, Lord Tennyson’s poem becomes the eternal question; Is it better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all?

Orchid bees come in combinations of brilliant and iridescent colors, including green, blue, purple, orange, and yellow! (PC: *Euglossa imperialis*; Flickr, USGS Bee Lab)

Orchid Bee Mine – Sylvie Finn
For many, Valentine’s Day is about indulgent gift giving. Maybe you’re thinking about getting your loved one an orchid, or perhaps a fancy perfume. Well, I hate to break it to you, but you’re a little late to the game on that idea. Orchid bees are the ultimate authority on Valentine’s Day gift giving. As their name suggests, male orchid bees have a special relationship with tropical orchids (Orchidaceae). Males are attracted to the sweet and specific volatiles of orchids and use special hairs on their front legs to collect the essential oils that produce the scents. The males then store these essential oils in large modified hind legs. Each species of orchid bee has its own “recipe” of scents to combine, creating the perfect perfume to woo a mate. Once the male bee has perfected his fragrance, he presents his perfume to females in the hopes of impressing her with his ultimate Valentine’s Day gift. If he’s lucky, his perfume will be so complex and impressive that the female orchid bee will choose him as her valentine.

Tobacco hornworm moths are nocturnal pollinators. (PC: Mike Lewinski, Flickr)

You take too much in this relationship – Adam Pepi
Hawkmoths are nocturnal pollinators of many plant species, including the fragrant night-opening flowers of wild tobacco. The pollination is beneficial for the tobacco plants, but sometimes the moths leave an unpleasant gift behind: their offspring. Hawkmoths deposit eggs on tobacco plants, which develop into giant caterpillars (also known as hornworms), devouring the leaves of the tobacco. This makes this a risky deal for the tobacco, but they have other options: tobacco plants that are attacked by caterpillars keep their flowers closed at night so that the hawkmoths aren’t attracted, and instead open their flowers during the day to attract hummingbirds. We can learn something from the tobacco plant this Valentine’s Day–don’t let the hawkmoth in your life hold you back.

Bicolored striped-sweat bees (*Agapostemon virescens*) are faithful partners of wild roses.

Roses and bees–a love story a million years in the making – Nick Dorian
It wouldn’t be Valentine’s day without roses. But the roses you pick up for your honey are a far cry from the roses a bee visits in a meadow. Wild roses are simple and straightforward: five white or light pink petals open to the sky, a delicate fragrance, with pollen-laden anthers and corollas full of nectar. These flowers look and smell this way as the result of a love story with bees millions of years in the making. In contrast, ornamental roses show what happens when humans meddle with this relationship. Through careful breeding over thousands of years, we’ve managed to accentuate all the flower traits that we deem desirable, and discarded those we deem undesirable. A swirl of lipstick red petals, a hyper-intense fragrance, and no messy pollen or sticky nectar to speak of–something a bee would never recognize as her faithful lover! As a result, ornamental roses are entirely dependent on humans for reproduction. Ornamental roses may win our hearts, but it’s safe to say their long-term relationship with bees is over for good.

educate

Lazy lawnmowers and landscape mullets

By Atticus Murphy

Maybe you’re the type of person who’s interested in nature but don’t know you can help. You live in a city or a suburb, with not much space and just a typical grassy lawn covering what space you have. Maybe you’ve also recently learned that insect pollinators like bees are crucial for our ecosystems but may be experiencing significant declines caused by habitat loss due to humans. What can you do to help, without breaking the bank or spending too much of your time on gardening?

A lawn with a more and less frequently mowed portion on left and right respectively, showing the diversity of flowers that can emerge when given time to grow (Photo: Sue Pranskus).

If this sounds like you, there’s a surprisingly simple option available to you: do less! Mowing grass lawns frequently (more than twice a month) is a good way to keep the grass cropped low and cut down on weeds. But this low, flowerless grass lawn is essentially a food desert for bees and other pollinators. Happily, studies have shown that if you simply mow a bit less, your once barren yard can become a buffet for bees in just a few short weeks. Simply shifting towards cutting your lawn every two or three weeks instead of once a week can greatly increase the number of bees and other pollinators that are able to forage there, as quick-blooming “weedy” flowers sprout up from the soil. Instead of treating weeds like unwanted invaders, to help save our native bee populations, treat them like welcomed guests! They’ll beautify your lawn for a few days at a time all throughout the growing season and they’ll do it for free. All it takes it giving them a bit more time between mowing to put up their flowers.

If you enjoy using your lawn for outdoor activities or are required to maintain it at a certain length by local authorities, reducing your mowing frequency as much as you can within these limits is still a great way to help pollinators by giving flowers more of a chance to bloom before cutting them. Remember, this “lazy lawnmower” strategy for helping pollinators does not require drastic lifestyle changes: instead, it might be totally compatible with whatever uses you get out of your lawn now. Green grass can remain on your property for sitting, lying, and playing, and you can see significant numbers of new flowers all while still keeping your lawn looking well-kempt. If you’re concerned about appearances and don’t want to give over the front lawn to being taller, then consider only letting your back lawn grow out a little. Scientists have nicknamed this practice the “landscape mullet” because like the famous haircut, it’s longer at the back. Because pollinators are able to move around to locate flowers, they will be served just as well by a back lawn with flowers as they would a front lawn.

A monarch butterfly feeding on a mustard flower (family Brassicaceae) sprouting from a grassy lawn (Photo: Rachael Bonoan).

What types of flowers will spontaneously recruit in your lawn? It’s hard to say, and that’s part of the fun! In Massachusetts you might expect to see pollinator-friendly flowers like dandelions (Taraxacum species), clovers (Trifolium species), butter-and-eggs (Linaria vulgaris) and other quick-blooming, low-growing species, like the mustard pictured above. Many of these species may not be native to the U.S., but they are nevertheless great sources of nutrition for native pollinator species. So if you’re interested in helping pollinators but don’t want to make the leap into pollinator-friendly gardening just yet, getting a little lazy with lawn management and welcoming some weeds into your life is a great first step towards making your property a refuge for native insect pollinators.

cultivate, educate

To support spring pollinators, think big

In summer, pollinators are not often hard-pressed to find flowers. In fact, you might support them without even knowing it: community gardens, flowering herbs on front steps and balconies, or milkweed growing in a tree-well all provide food for pollinators during the hottest, longest days of the year.

But what about in spring? It’s not as easy to accidentally support pollinators during these cooler months of the year when the ground has just begun to thaw; there haven’t been that many warm days; and persistent rain (as continues this year) can impede pollinators from finding food. Indeed, queen bumble bees emerge from hibernation in early spring and need immediate access to both nectar and pollen in order to start their colonies for the year, and many solitary bees and hover flies are only active for several weeks in spring: no flowers means these pollinators cannot make it.

So, how can you support pollinators in April and May? Think big. Plant native flowering shrubs or trees. In New England, you’ll be hard-pressed to find better forage for insects than these woody plants. Not only do these larger plants produce copious amounts of flowers, but they are often important host plants for caterpillars of moths and butterflies. Plus, with the exception of woodland wildflowers, there simply aren’t enough growing days by mid-spring for most smaller, herbaceous (soft-stemmed) perennials to flower.

In addition to supporting pollinators, serviceberry produces delicious berries enjoyed by both birds and humans.
PC: Ryan Hodnett, Wikimedia Commons.

Choose plants that bloom sequentially from April through early-June. By selecting plants with overlapping flowering times, you will support a high diversity of pollinators regardless of when they emerge. To help you decide, here are several hardy options of native trees and shrubs that support bees, followed by average flowering times in Massachusetts:

pussy willow (Salix discolor, early-April)
red maple (Acer rubrum, early-April)
eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis, late-April/early-May)
serviceberry (Amelanchier sp., late-April)
chokecherry (Prunus virginiana, May)
red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa, May)
nannyberry(Viburnum lentago, May)
black cherry (Prunus serotina, late-May/early-June)
red osier dogwood (Cornus sericea, May/early-June)
ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius, June)

The eastern carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica) is one of the many native pollinators that enjoy redbud flowers.

Although many ornamental flowering trees are pretty, the frills that we enjoy often do little to help pollinators. Even worse, some ornamental cherry trees sometimes lack pollen and/or nectar altogether, making them essentially useless to flower visitors. In contrast, many ornamental crab apple varieties (Malus sp.), though non-native, are one alternative that appeal to both humans and insects.

Wild cherry trees have five petals per flower, but this “doubled” ornamental produces copious petals (possibly at the expense of quality nectar and pollen) that dissuade pollinators from visiting the flowers.
PC: Yoshikazu Takada, Flickr

One last note: to further help early-spring pollinators in a different way, try “leaving the leaves” until early-May. It is tempting to clean up your yard as early as possible, but many insects overwinter as various life stages in the messy leaf piles and ground cover, e.g. butterfly eggs, chrysalises, and adults of different species. Give them a chance to emerge by delaying your clean-up a few weeks. You’ll be rewarded when all these beautiful pollinators return to visit the flowers in your garden!