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Science Quickly

Bees Rank Pollen by Taste

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2016

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The discerning insects returned to flowers with sweetened pollen, but avoided revisiting flowers with bitter pollen. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

0:22.7

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

0:33.6

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher in Taliatta.

0:39.1

Walk through Times Square.

0:40.7

You're bombarded with advertising.

0:42.9

And it turns out a bumblebee might have a similar feeling buzzing through a field of flowers.

0:48.0

So these flowers are these billboards.

0:49.7

They're advertising a good, this delicious nectar award.

0:53.2

And bees are very picky shoppers.

0:55.0

Anne Leonard, a pollination biologist at the University of Nevada, Reno.

0:59.0

She describes a flower field as a sort of pollination marketplace, and one way bees choose where to visit...

1:05.0

Bees are nectar experts. They are really good at assessing even really small differences in the sugar concentration of nectar.

1:15.3

They also scope out the shape and size of flowers and their color and scent.

1:19.8

And now Leonard and her colleagues have discovered that bumblebees are pollen aficionados, too.

1:24.8

They found that out by lacing batches of cherry pollen with either table sugar or bitter quinine.

1:30.5

And to display the pollen to bees?

1:32.4

We got really into it.

1:33.4

We started 3D printing flowers in our lab.

1:36.1

And for the anther, the male flower part, which presents the pollen, pipe cleaners.

...

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