
Bumblebees’ ‘clever trick’ fools plants into flowering - boulos
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52759804
======
ISL
One need not view this as "damaging" the plants. It is also a crude signalling
mechanism. The plants need the bees in order to survive as a species. If
they're able to feed the bees in times of famine, both the bees and the plants
win.

Furthermore, a plant species that can help to feed bees during a pollinator-
famine is a plant species that is going to get a lot of pollinator support.

~~~
hinkley
I've heard that from an insect's perspective, witch hazel tastes terrible
and/or isn't that nutritious.

But it gets away with it because it's the only game in town. Nothing else is
blooming at that time, and if you haven't gone dormant (or woke up too early)
it's witch hazel pollen or nothing at all.

------
anonu
Bees never cease to fascinate me. The more I learn about them the more I
realize we only understand a small part of their world. We still have
tremendous things to learn about their society, how they cooperate,
communicate.

Check this out about Japanese honeybees that I learned last month:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awoV5Wj9Iys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awoV5Wj9Iys)
They will swarm invaders and buzz their wings creating enough friction and
heat to kill the enemy. European honeybees, however, do not have the same
instinct.

~~~
salawat
Bees are amazing and woefully underappreciated. I had a garden going year
before last, and some bees would come and just take care of the pollination
for me. Last year though, no bee bros.

Pollinating by hand _sucks_. Royally. Still considering maybe trying to raise
a hive.

------
odnes
I wonder if we'll ever see indoor farms which grow fruits from stem cells,
without the need for the rest of the plant.

~~~
colinhowe
I asked this some time ago and never found a satisfactory answer. There
doesn't appear to be much research in this area either :/

~~~
odnes
I looked into it briefly a few months ago but I'm not a biochemist/plant
scientist; there is a lot of research on growing human organs, not so much
growing fruits.

I'm sure it's possible to trick a plant stem cell into turning into a flower,
then fruit, but I think the main question is whether it's economically viable.
At the end of the day you would have to bypass photosynthesis and introduce
sugars from some external source to grow the fruit which is probably quite
expensive and inefficient. I chalked it up to being a very obvious idea which
Monsato would have a solution for if it was viable.

Interesting to think though that if you did it perfectly you could turn some
weight in sugar + water + stuff into an avocado.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I worry that it's not as easy as just tricking some cells into growing into
what they want - you'll likely also need to replicate appropriate flow of
energy, nutrients and signalling chemicals - i.e. basically fake the rest of
the plant.

------
Paraesthetic
The title sounds like they are click baiting the flowers. Then I realized that
was actually the case.

"You'll never believe the way these bees got this plant to flower!
Unbelievable"

~~~
ginko
"Dandelions hate them"

------
stormdennis
I was recently cutting a path through an area that's been left go wild for 15
years. I've gone at it from both ends but there s patch in the middle that I'm
leaving for now. It's an area filled with some kind of flowering weed that
looks a bit like white bluebells only with much greater density of flowers.
It's alive with bees and and I neither want to be stung nor want to deprive
them of food. I figure a narrow path through it leaving the weeds at both
sides once they've stopped collecting pollen this year.

------
Ccecil
Could they be cutting holes in the leaves and inserting some sort of pollen
solution (gathered from other plants) and when the non-flowering plant gets
the chemical marker for "other plants are pollenating" then it tricks the
plant into believing it it is time to flower?

I ask with no knowledge of this :) But I do remember flipping through a book a
while back on chemical and environmental tricks to make plants flower in
greenhouses (not just lighting signals)

~~~
dessant
It's possible that plants detect the chemical markers of the insects while
they bite the leaves. A response to pests could be early flowering, to give
the plant a better chance to complete its life cycle.

Chitosan is derived from chitin, and it acts in a similar way, it induces an
immune response in plants, and makes them more vigorous. Plants treated with
chitosan usually grow larger, flower earlier, and produce more fruit.

------
empath75
I’m not sure it’s damage or fooling the plants. The whole purpose of flowers
is to be pollinated by bees.

------
atentaten
>"I think it's fascinating how much we still don't know about organisms that
we think we know really well," said Prof De Moraes.

I'm always taken aback by these types of statements. The best scientists know
that they know very little.

~~~
betenoire
Knowing that you don't much is not the same as discovering new things you
didn't know. If the"awe and wonder" weren't there, they probably wouldn't have
chosen that field.

And it IS fascinating to uncover unknown unknowns

------
Geee
I once saw this happening. Lots of bumblebees on tree leaves and flying around
certain trees. I thought that they were eating something from the leaves. It
seemed weird but I assumed it was a known behavior.

------
qwerty456127
The trick doesn't work if reproduced by humans - obviously it is misunderstood

~~~
OneGuy123
This seems to be a symbioticaly developed messaging system. The bees need the
plants and the plants need the bees: so the been message them in case they are
having a hard time. Since if the bees die because of not enough pollen ->
plants die also.

Bees probably release some special chemical through their saliva or whatever
they have to message the plants that they are not some random animal eating
it.

------
noizejoy
From TFA:

> However the team are keeping an open mind on whether the plants might be the
> ones in the driving seat.

If that’s the case, maybe the headline should read “bumbling bees tricked into
working early by clever plants”

All joking aside, this seems like a textbook case of correlation having been
established, but causation not so much (yet).

~~~
rbanffy
It's probably both ways. Neither evolved in isolation and flowers and bees
have been doing it since ever.

~~~
abrowne
Well, at least since the Cretaceous :-)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_history_of_plants...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_history_of_plants#Flowers)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee#Evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee#Evolution)

~~~
fenwick67
TIL most dinosaurs never saw a flower :(

~~~
yencabulator
To be fair, you've never seen a forest of mushrooms. That might have been neat
too.

