[Pollinator] NPR WATCH: The Secret Buzz Only Bumblebees Know To Unlock Our Favorite Crops

Tue Jul 19 16:28:35 PDT 2016

Hi Peter,

I agree. Such videos should be attractive, entertaining, informative and totally ACCURATE!

Regards,

Graham

Prof Graham H. Pyke
School of Life Sciences
University of Technology Sydney
e: Graham.Pyke at uts.edu.au<mailto:Graham.Pyke at uts.edu.au>

Co-founder (with Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University) of Sustainability Central Website: http://sustainabilitycentral.com.au<http://sustainabilitycentral.com.au/>

Facebook page: Sustainability Central
Twitter: @sustaincentral

Partner with Prof Paul Ehrlich’s Stanford-based Millennium Alliance for Humanity & the Biosphere
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From: Pollinator [mailto:pollinator-bounces+graham.pyke=uts.edu.au at lists.sonic.net] On Behalf Of Peter Bernhardt
Sent: Wednesday, 20 July 2016 6:37 AM
To: Kelly Rourke
Cc: 00—Pollinator 00—Pollinator
Subject: Re: [Pollinator] NPR WATCH: The Secret Buzz Only Bumblebees Know To Unlock Our Favorite Crops

Dear Kelly:

Yes, this video is attractive, entertaining and informative.  As someone who has studied buzz-pollination in four countries since 1976 (Hey, I can't the THAT old!), though, bits of the text and narration are a little misleading.  What's wrong with the following statement?

In contrast, buzz-pollinated flowers encourage bees to eat the pollen directly and hope some grains will make it to another flower. The evolutionary strategy is baffling to scientists.

Huh?  When was the last time anyone saw a bee gobbling pollen as it emerges from the anther holes?  Most buzz-pollinated flowers are visited by females collecting the pollen for their offspring or developing sisters.  Males of the same species tend to avoid buzz-pollinated flowers unless they are looking for nubile females.  Furthermore, this mode of pollination has been studied intensely in America since the 1960's and evolutionary biologists are not baffled by it anymore.

Second, the narration compares the buzz-pollinated flower to a private dining club.  That's fine, the clientele is limited to those capable of harvesting the grains via sonication.  However, this implies that when bumblebees forage all they visit are the buzz-pollinated flowers during the SAME foraging bout.  This is not the case.  The bumblebees must participate in the same free-for-all on other flowering species in the area.  Why?  Most buzz-pollinated flowers lack nectar.  If the bee did nothing but forage on buzz-pollinated flowers during a collecting trip it would soon run out of energy and collapse before retuning to the nest.  Sonicating bees almost invariably visit nectar-secreting flowers on most buzz-pollinating trips.  When they switch to nectar secreting flowers they also collect some pollen and it is mixed with buzz-pollinated flowers.  The late Walter Macior was among the first to show this in the '60's - '80's in his work on buzz-pollinated Dodecatheon and Pedicularis species of North America.  I found it in bumblebees foraging on buzz-pollianted Echeandia in Central America in the '70's.  Bumblebees aren't the only ones that do this, by the way.  It happens in Australia where bumblebees are not native and one sees the same mixed pollen loads on the hind legs of halictids and Leioproctus (colletids) caught on buzz-pollinated Dianella, other lily-like plants and Hibbertia.  Sun orchids (Thelymitra) actually mimic buzz-pollinated plants.  They wear clusters of ball-like hairs on their columns to lure bees into vibrating them while their bee butts contact the stick plug that lets them carry of the orchid's pollen.   All this stuff from the labs of Bernhardt, Buchmann, Macior and others has been published for years.

If you don't believe me ask Dr Buchmann who would have made a superior consultant on this video.

Peter

On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 2:24 PM, Kelly Rourke <kr at pollinator.org<mailto:kr at pollinator.org>> wrote:
Nice educational video on buzz pollination from KQED:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/19/486501293/watch-the-secret-buzz-only-bumblebees-know-to-unlock-our-favorite-crops

Kelly Rourke
Program Coordinator
Pollinator Partnership
423 Washington Street, 5th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94111
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