Buzz pollination

Definition

Some plants — tomatoes, aubergines, blueberries, cranberries and many others — hold their pollen inside tubular anthers that open only through a small pore. A bee grips the anther and vibrates its flight muscles, and the pollen is shaken free. Bumblebees, carpenter bees, many solitary bees and stingless bees can do this. Honey bees cannot, which is why glasshouse tomato growers buy bumblebee colonies.

Honey records that discuss this

• Blueberry honeyTangy and lightly fruity with a green, slightly astringent edge — recognisably related to the berry without tasting of jam.
• Cranberry honeyTart and fruity with a genuine cranberry acidity — one of very few honeys where sourness is a real part of the profile.

Plant records that discuss this

• BlueberryUseful early forage, and a textbook illustration that abundant flowers do not guarantee an efficient pollination relationship.
• BilberryGood nectar at a critical early moment for northern colonies and for emerging bumblebee queens, whose founding success tracks bilberry abundance closely in Fennoscandia.
• CranberryA moderate nectar and pollen source, and one that honey bees are notably reluctant to work when anything else is available.
• GojiA useful nectar source over an unusually long season.

Bee records that discuss this

• BumblebeesLarge, furry, loud, and cold-tolerant in a way no honey bee is. Bumblebees run annual colonies: a mated queen emerges alone in spring, founds a nest by herself, raises workers through the summer, produces new queens and males in late season, and then the entire colony dies except those new queens. They do make honey, in the strict sense of ripened nectar stores — just a few days' worth, because they have no winter to survive as a colony.
• Buff-tailed bumblebeeThe commonest bumblebee in Europe, the one reared commercially by the million for tomato pollination, and — as a consequence of that trade — an invasive species on several continents. It is also the bee behind the winter bumblebees now active through December and January in mild British cities, which is a genuine and recent behavioural change.
• Mayan stingless beeThe bee the Maya kept for two thousand years before anyone brought a honey bee to the Americas, and one whose management came embedded in a religious and calendrical framework rather than an agricultural one. Xunan kab — the royal lady — is a stingless bee kept in hollow log hives sealed at both ends, and its honey is thin, tart and used as medicine as much as food. The tradition very nearly ended, and its revival is as much cultural recovery as beekeeping.
• Common eastern bumblebeeNorth America's commercially reared bumblebee, produced by the million for glasshouse tomato and berry pollination, and the continent's counterpart to Europe's buff-tailed bumblebee in both usefulness and controversy. It is abundant, adaptable and thriving while several of its relatives collapse — and its commercial rearing is implicated in some of those collapses.
• Blue-banded beeFast, stocky solitary bees marked with brilliant iridescent blue or white bands, and among the most effective buzz pollinators anywhere. They grip a flower and vibrate their flight muscles at a frequency that shakes pollen out of tubular anthers — the technique tomatoes require and honey bees cannot perform — which has made them the subject of serious commercial pollination research in Australia.

Guide records that discuss this

• Honey bees and wild beesThere are around twenty thousand bee species and only a handful make honey. Conflating the two has produced a great deal of well-meant conservation effort aimed at the one species that needs it least.