A deal, not a favour
Why Do Bees Visit Flowers?
Bees come for food. Flowers pay them in nectar to carry pollen around.
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Step 1 of 5
Plants cannot walk to each other.
To make seeds, pollen from one flower must reach another flower of the same kind. The plant needs a courier.
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Step 2 of 5
Nectar is the payment.
Flowers make sugary nectar for no other reason than to attract visitors. It is a wage, produced specifically to be given away.
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Step 3 of 5
Pollen sticks to the bee by accident.
Bee hair is branched and slightly charged, so pollen clings to it. The bee is not trying to carry it — it just cannot avoid it.
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Step 4 of 5
The next flower collects it.
At the following flower some grains brush off onto the receptive part. That is pollination — and now the plant can make seeds.
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Step 5 of 5
Bees stay loyal to one flower type at a time.
A foraging bee usually works one species per trip. That is precisely what the plant needs — pollen delivered to the right species.
A single hive can visit millions of flowers in a day. Around a third of what we eat depends on this arrangement.
The short version
Bees visit flowers for nectar, and the pollen they accidentally carry lets plants make seeds.
Try it yourself
Watch one bee for a minute in a mixed flowerbed. It will almost certainly stick to a single kind of flower.
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