Flowering plants and bees made a bargain that neither fully intended. Flowers offer nectar, a sugar fuel, and often pollen, a protein-rich dust. Bees gather both to feed themselves and their young. In crawling through the bloom they pick up pollen on hairs and body, then brush some of it onto the next flower of the same species. That transfer is pollination. From the plant’s point of view it is sex at a distance. Fertilized ovules become seeds, and the flower’s ovary becomes fruit.

Not all bees live in hives. Many are solitary, nesting in soil, wood, or hollow stems. Honey bees are famous because they store surplus honey and can be managed in boxes, but wild bees, flies, moths, beetles, birds, and bats do a large share of the world’s pollination. Color, scent, and shape of flowers are advertisements tuned to the visitors that work best for that plant. Night bloomers often smell strong and look pale. Bee flowers may have ultraviolet patterns people cannot see.

Crops such as apples, almonds, blueberries, and many vegetables depend on this traffic. When habitat shrinks, pesticides accumulate, or disease spreads, yields fall even if the fields look green. A garden with mixed flowers across the season is not only pretty. It is a small restoration of the route pollen has to travel.
