Use roses as bee magnets for your veggie garden Credit: article written by Ludwigs Roses
Did you know that 70% of the food we eat depends on being pollinated by bees? Summer squash like zucchini and gem squash, as well as cucumbers, particularly rely on bees to pollinate their flowers, as do tomatoes, peppers and brinjals. Scientists have now found out that buzzing over a bloom, flapping their wings, makes a slight positive electrical charge and they sense the slight negative electrical charge of the bloom that needs pollinating. Once a bloom is pollinated it emits a no vacancy signal with a positive charge. How do they find flowers and remain faithful to a specific plant species? The bee’s senses are adapted to signals of the flowers – the colour and the scent. It is a reflection of ultraviolet light from the flowers they detect, but also the direction of the scent they are able detect with their antennae. Bees remain faithful to a productive plant species until it stops flowering. That is important since there would be no fertilisation for a bee to fly from a rose bloom to a Calendula or a strawberry. Observing bee activity amongst mixed rose bed is also interesting. 2021 • I SSUE 61 1 2 2020
