Bumble bees are exceptionally interesting behaviourly for example they will nibble plants
to get them to bloom. I’ve definitely seen this in my garden. A BB will come back again
and again to a bud and nip at it. There’s been some research done on this
https://www.livescience.com/bumblebee-bites-make-flowers-bloom-early.html so I don’t
think we can dismiss a BB’s behaviour as mindless. Something is definitely going on
there. Another piece of research found when bumble bees land on flowers, some of the
positive static charge from their bodies moves to the flower and cancels some of the
flower’s negative static charge; this lasts for 1 to 2 min. The authors hypothesized
that a bee might use the net charge of a flower to judge if the flower has been recently
visited by another bee and, therefore, has diminished offerings of nectar and pollen.
https://www.pnas.org/content/113/26/7020
Very cool
With kindest regards
Mary
On Aug 8, 2020, at 8:08 PM, David Patriquin
<davidgpatriquin@yahoo.ca<mailto:davidgpatriquin@yahoo.ca>> wrote:
Well that is how it operates more generally, once the flowers are fertilized they send out
a different signal to pollimaors.
re Back Knapweed, def. a boon to pollinators and I plant it in my garden area
David G Patriquin
Professor of Biology (retired)
Dalhousie University
Web Stuff at versicolor.ca<http://versicolor.ca>
Forest Blog at nsforestnotes.ca<http://nsforestnotes.ca>
emails sent to patriqui@dal.ca<mailto:patriqui@dal.ca> &
davidgpatriquin@gmail.com<mailto:davidgpatriquin@gmail.com> go to
davidgpatriquin@yahoo.ca<mailto:davidgpatriquin@yahoo.ca>
On Saturday, August 8, 2020, 04:52:07 p.m. ADT, Burkhard Plache
<burkhardplache@gmail.com<mailto:burkhardplache@gmail.com>> wrote:
Having too much time to sit in the backyard,
I took to observing bumble bees visiting a patch
of Black Knapweed. When following a single bee,
it appears they somehow recall which flowers they
have already visited, and which are new to them.
They seem to nearly never revisit an already visited
flower.
Does somebody on this list know if my observation
is just a fluke, or if it represents known bumblebee
behaviour. If it is typical behaviour, is it known how
they do it (scent, visual, tracking, ...)?
Curious,
Burkhard
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