Happy Bee Day…
We need bees to enjoy all the beautiful flowers. The relationship between flowers and bees is a STRONG one! If flowers are one of your favorite things wether thats smelling a beautiful bouquet, admiring a centerpiece or growing them in your garden…. don’t forget about the bees and their important role in creating that beauty! Today is World Bee Day (May 20th, 2023) and we wanted to take a minute and HONOR THE BEES for blessing us with the abundant beauty of flowers.
Bees are responsible for pollinating and helping create more BEAUTIFUL flowers. It is important to know that the pollinating of flowers started from bees millions of years ago. Read below to learn a bit more about the role of bees, pollen and flowers!
Lead Image Source : Andrii Romanov/Shutterstock
Check out this video of some cute bumblebees covered in pollen:
The Pollinator – Photo by Getty Images
Role of the Bee
Bees are thought to be one of the first intentional pollinators that coincided with flowering plants dated back to 120 million years ago.
A few facts about bees:
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Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and for producing honey.
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There are 2 types of bees:
The Bumblebee
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
The Honeybee
Source: weter78/Shutterstock
Bumble bees generally have thicker bodies, dark wings and A LOT of hair
Bumblebees have an advantage holding more pollen in their fuzzy bodies and can spread a lot more pollen to flowers. Bees gather pollen from the flowers they land on with their teeny tiny hairs and then pass it onto the next flower it collects pollen from.
Honey bees are usually thinner and less hairy. They usually look more like wasps but they are in fact bees!
Role of the Flower
Image: blueringmedia – stock.adobe.com
Pollination Diagram
Flowers rely on bees to cross-pollinate their female plants. When bees feed on the pollen, their body picks up excess pollen via their pollen-collecting hairs, which is then released when they land. Pollen act as the flower’s seed, which is mandatory for the survival of that flower species. We need bees to keep pollinating to KEEP ALL THE FLOWERS!
We are so thankful for the bees doing all the hard work to pollinate and ensure we can enjoy and provide all the beautiful flowers to our couples for their wedding day!
Pollen: a fine powdery substance, typically yellow, consisting of microscopic grains discharged from the male part of a flower. Each grain contains a male gamete that can fertilize the female ovule, to which pollen is transported by the bees. “Source Oxford Dictionary”
Pollen plays a vital role in the reproduction of life for both the flower and the bee. Pollen is a major part of the bee’s diet. This symbiotic relationship of transferring pollen from flower to the next flower is how most plants have been capable of reproducing for millions of years now!
Fun Fact: All of the photos below are from our personal cut flower garden. We are working hard on our cut flowers to be able to provide fresh, local and organic flowers to use in your bouquets and centerpieces! We source most of our flowers farm fresh from Columbia and Ecuador but the less shipping and handling the better. We encourage the bees to pollinate our blooms as much as possible!
XOXO,
Ashley