THE HONEY SEEKERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 107, 27 July 1927, Page 11

THE HONEY SEEKERS

We talk of bees flitting from flower to flower, but they usually have favourite kinds of flowers to which they are faithful. It is fortunate that that is so, for many flowers are fertilised by insects, and fertilisation would be difficult or impossible if an insect carried the pollen of a lily to a rose, and then the pollen of both flowers to an acacia tree. If we examine the balls of pollen on the legs of honey-bees or bumblebees we shall find that they are uniform in colour —yellow or red or white, according to the flower they have chosen. Usually, too, all the bees of a hive are unanimous in their tastes, and hence it is that we have distinct kinds of honey—clover honey or heather honey or acacia honey, and so on. When several honey-yielding flowers are in bloom at the same time it will be found that different hives choose different flowers, and make differently-flavoured honey. It is quite natural that a bee should devote its attention to one particular kind of flower, because the extraction of honey is quite a fine art, and requires skill and experience. Ii is quite natural too that all the bees of a hive should select the same favourite kind of flower, as all the bees have the same mother, and therefore the same instincts. The fidelity of insects to certain flowers accounts for the extraordinary way in which flowers are adapted to entice and to receive them. If one insect would do as well as another, and if insects visited flowers indiscriminately, such particular and precise adaptation would not be necessary or specially advantageous; but, as fertilisation is effected chiefly by the same kind of insects, it is evident that the more exactly the flower is adapted to the taste and size and habits of the fertilising insect the more likely it is to survive; those that fit the insect best will survive, and thus the flowers will become better with each generation. It is this that has developed the distinctive colours, shapes, and scents of flowers, and even their hour of opening and closing. Clover, which is fertilised by bees and other insects during the day, is most fragrant when the sun is shining; while the honey- j suckle which is visited by moths, becomes most fragrant at night. Thus it is that certain flowers have their honey at the bottom of long, narrow pouches, so that it can be reached only by the favoured insect. Thus it is that sweet-peas and orchids have surfaces suitable for certain insects to alight or to cling to. Some of these mutual adaptations are very strange. A South . American flower, for instance, is very like the butterfly which visits it and fertilises it and the butterfly not only fertilises it but also deposits eggs on its leaves, and the eggs afterwards turn into caterpillars and eat the flower. More extraordinary still is the adaptation between the Tucca lily and the Tucca moth. One can easily understand a moth becoming devoted to a lily, but the devotion of the Tucca moth to the Tucca lily is of a very peculiar kind. The flowers of the Tucca lily open at night, and as they open in creeps a female moth, collecting the lily pollen and kneading it into a lump about ■ three times as big as her own head, and carrying it off to another lily. After running about she settles on ; a pistil, pierces the ovary of the flower , and lays her eggs in it. Then she goes to the funnel-shaped stigma on the top of the pistil, and strenuously pushes the pollen into the funnel-mouth, so fertilising the lily. By the time the lily seeds have formed, the eggs of the moth have grown into little eaterl pillars, which find the seeds good food. r and help themselves to 18 or 20 of i j them apiece. i There are some seeds, however, that j are always left uneaten, and so the

arrangement is of mutual advantage to the lily and to the moth, for the lily is fertilised and gets the seeds, and the little caterpillars get a good nursery and plenty of nourishing food: and so fidelity is rewarded.