Planting tomatoes in the garden this year? Better hope you have bumblebees too, since tomato flowers require a good shaking to obtain the pollen out.
“What the bumblebee does is grab a tomato flower, curve its abdominal area around the bottom of the tomato flower, and then shiver its wing muscles at a particular frequency, shaking pollen from the holes like a salt shaker,” states Paige Embry, author of Our Native Bees: North America’s Endangered Pollinators and the Fight to Conserve Them.
When Embry discovered of that interesting phenomenon, she embarked on a reporting journey to document the lives of the continent’s wild, native pollinators, of which there are some 4,000 species. Some secrete silk (Hylaeus spp.), she writes, while others shave fuzzy plants to build luxurious pillows for their eggs (Anthidium spp.). Still others nest in increased stems, cow patties, and snail shells (Osmia spp.).
And though Embry points out the most widely known pollinators– the non-native honeybees– she devotes much of the book to lesser-known agricultural helpers like the blue orchard bee (Osmia lignaria) and the alkali bee (Nomia melanderi), a respected pollinator of alfalfa.
In this sector, she shares tales of these uncommon bees, and Susannah Lerman of the United States Forest Service joins to talk about how attracting more native bees to your yard may be as simple as laying off the yard mowing.
Sector Visitors
Paige Embry is author of Our Native Bees: The United States and Canada’s Endangered Pollinators and the Battle to Conserve Them (2018, Wood Press). She’s based in Seattle, Washington.
Susannah Lerman is a research study ecologist with the USDA Forest Service based in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Meet the Manufacturer
Intagliata is Science Friday’s senior producer. He when acted as a prop in an optical impression and speaks passable Individual retirement account Flatowese.