Bee Pollination Importance, Steps, and Guide

Bee Pollination Importance, Steps, and Guide

Today, we talk about Bee Pollination and its importance.

Introduction:

Pollination occurs when pollen is moved from the female parts of a flower to the male parts.   Pollen is often moved to one plant flowers on a different plant of the same variety. The effect of pollination is the formation of a fruit or seed.

We enjoy apples, watermelon, cucumbers, squash, and other fruits because of insect and bee pollination. One-third of the food produced in the world depends on pollination, and bees hold the main important role among all pollinators.

Pollinators can increase plant diversity, which is key to the improvement and preservation of the natural environment. Through pollination, they can offset the damage completed to plants by herbivores and pathogens. The pollination process of wild and economic plants can help mitigate climate change. It makes ecosystem recovery faster, too, after typhoons. Pollination makes it possible to have agricultural production that guarantees safe food supply, and bees, with their highly nutritious products, help supply to better food quality. How do Plants attract bees? Plants rely on bees and other insects to reproduce and so they have adapted, over time, to become extra attractive to them. Bees are drawn to plants with open or flat tubular flowers with a lot of pollen and nectar. A flower’s scent can have particular appeal to bees, and its bright colors can lure the bees in.

What is bee pollination? Bee pollination is one kind of entomophily, which is pollination performed by insects. Bees are one of the most regular pollinators and manage to visit several different plant species in a single afternoon. Bees land on these various plants and assemble pollen and nectar, which they carry back to their hives as food for the colony. As they travel from one plant to another plant, bees deposit pollen on the female reproductive organs of new plants. This transfer of pollen in the trees allows for fertilization.

Bee pollination importance:

The importance of bee pollination is explained below;

How does bee pollinate plants? The main important thing that bees do is pollinate. Pollination is required for plants to reproduce, and so many plants depend on bees or other insects as pollinators.

When a bee gathers nectar and pollen from the flower of a plant, some pollen from the stamens. The male bee reproductive organ of the flower sticks to the hairs of her body. When she visits another flower, some of this pollen is rubbed off onto the stigma, or tip of the pistil the female reproductive organ of the flower. When this happens, fertilization is probable, and a fruit, carrying seeds, can develop. Do bees pollinate everything? Most of them are pollinated in whole by honey bees and by the crop’s normal pollinators such as bumblebees, orchard bees, squash bees, and solitary bees. Where the similar plants have non-bee pollinators such as birds or other insects, these are indicated.

Globally, there are more honey bees than other types of bee and pollinating insects, so it is the world’s important pollinator of food crops. It is estimated that one-third of the food that we consume each day relies on pollination mostly by bees, but also by other insects, birds, and bats.

Many domestic and imported fruits and vegetables need pollination. Examples include avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, and sunflowers for oil, citrus fruit, peaches, kiwis, cucumbers, cherries, cranberries, and melons. For crops such as blueberries and almonds, the honey bee plays a necessary role in the pollination of commercial crops, with around 80% of the US crop supposed to be dependent on honey bees. Honey bees could pollinate clover and alfalfa, which are fed to cattle, so there are implications for the meat and dairy industry too. And that is not to mention the huge range of manufactured food products prepared from all these ingredients.

In addition, honey bees play a major role in the pollination of other important crops such as cotton and flax. And there is also a number of valuable non-food products formed by the honey bee, such as beeswax used in cleaning and beauty products.

Read: How To Fumigate and Disinfect Poultry House.

The importance of bees in agriculture;

• Bees are pollinators vital to the food chain. One-third of the food we eat would not be obtainable but for bees.
• Just consider of a world without tomatoes, beans, onions, and carrots, not to talk about the hundreds of other vegetables, oilseeds, and fruits that are dependent upon bees for pollination.
• Add to that, the livestock that is dependent upon a bee-pollinated plant, such as clover.
• No human activity or ingenuity can ever replace the work of bees and yet it is largely taken for granted.
• Bees pollinate about one-sixth of the world’s flowering species and some agricultural plants.
• Poorly pollinated plants generate fewer, often misshapen, fruits and lower yields of seed with inevitable consequences upon quality, availability, and price of food.
• One of the few farm activities that can really increase yields, rather than simply protect existing yields from losses, is to manage bees to encourage excellent pollination.
• The social life of the honey bee colony presents a controversial start of thinking about the structure of societies.
• The harvest from honey bees includes honey, pollen, wax, and propolis have nutritional, manufacturing, and medical applications.
• Pollination by bees is very important for genetic sustainability. Genes that have evolved in other animals are also important to our future, too.
• Bees are at risk of disappearing from our environment. Farming practices maintain to disturb the natural habitats and bumblebees at a rate which gives them little chance for re-establishment.

Causes of the decrease in bee population:

Truly, technology has aided food creation by the inventions of different techniques and equipment to aid food production. However, its environmental effects are troublesome; one of these is the reduction in the population of bees. The structure of agriculture, we adopt is quite unfavorable to the well-being and survival of bees.

The use of agro-chemicals, in the form of herbicides and pesticides, has really affected the activities of bees. Using the insecticide as a case study, research has shown that every batch of pollen a honey bee collects has at least six detectable pesticides in it, hence, serving as poison to them.

Also, early cultivation uses natural fertilizers, like clover and alfalfa to develop the yield of the crop. These natural fertilizers serve as good nutritious food for bees. However, we now utilize the synthetic fertilizers which are in turn detrimental to the well-being of the bees. Bees are decreasing because of environmental changes such as bush burning, industrialization, and new agricultural practices.

Our lives without the bees

Since bee pollination is an important procedure to aid the production of food and the bees to carry out this process, free of charge, are about going to extinction, humans are now paid to do the work of pollination. This sounds ridiculous, but it is indeed a lucrative basis of income. However, it is not efficient due to the limitation of the activity of the personnel carrying out this procedure.

The quality of the food we have is gradually reducing, because of the way and manner of the pollination procedure. We must ensure the procedure of beekeeping is sustained to secure the global growth of food production. Bees can be kept safe within this environment by planting bright-colored flowers, adoption of organic farming and a halt in bush burning.

Bee pollination process and steps:

The process of pollination is the move of male pollen to the female part of a crop.  Some crops are capable to self-pollinate, which means they can transfer the male pollen to an existing stigma of themselves.  Other crops like blueberry plants and grapefruit trees want cross-pollination, a bee-facilitated process of transferring the male pollen to the stigma of a new crop of the same type.  When the bees assemble nectar from the crops, the male pollen sticks to their fuzzy bodies and then is rubbed off on another crop. Once pollinated, the crops are fertilized in arranging for their seeds to be matured.  In addition to helping plants, the bees make honey that takes on the unique flavors of the crops that they pollinate.

Though the process seems simplistic, some flowers like orchids have complex mechanisms to attract bees for the function of pollination. In food, deception, the orchids show or smell as though they produce nectar when in fact they do not produce anything edible for the bees.

The following are the steps for bee pollination:

1. A little honey bee is attracted to a flower and seeks nectar from that flower. The bee lands and starts development. If the particular flower has pesticides on it, once the bee steps on it she dies. This is a huge conflict for our environment, the wax provides, and honey supply.
2. While gathering the flower’s nectar from the nectaries the honeybee brushes beside the anthers.
3. The pollen on the flower’s anther gets fixed on the bee’s hairy body. They get this honey back to the hive, and that’s what they eat, and the beekeepers collect.
4. The bee has effectively taken the pollen from that flower. The bee now moves to another flower, on another plant.
5. As the bee collects nectar some of the pollen from the other plant is rubbed onto the stigma of another plant. Now, this new plant will reproduce. This huge work that bees do, one by one, little by little.
6. The pollen on the stigma of the flower develops a tube that travels to the ovule, and fertilization takes place.
7. The fertilized ovule develops into a seed that will be a beautiful flower. This happens to be the final step of the pollination process.

Read: Bonsai Gardening Ideas, Tips.