Plants for Bees Calendar – South Africa

Description

Color of a Flower:

Bees prefer violet, blue, white and yellow Flowers. According to some research they found bees who harvested from violet Flowers harvested far more nectar than the next most rewarding colour, blue.

Scent of a Flower:

Choose plants that have A Sweet Scent because Bees only really see Flowers when they get reasonably close, maybe less than 60 centimetres, This means bees use scent, rather than sight, to Find Flowers from a distance.

Pattern of a Flower:

Bees distinguish between Fields of different shapes, which varies according to the Flower’s Geometry, The shape of a Flower’s petals and how they conduct electricity.

The electric Bee and Flower:

Bees can Sense the Electric Fields of Flowers and affect them so that other bees know when its recently been harvested.

As bees Fly through the air they bump into charged particles like dust to small molecules. The friction of these microscopic collisions is said to strip electrons from the bee’s surface so the bee usually ends up with a positive charge. Flowers tend to have a negative charge most days because The flowers themselves are electrically earthed, but the air around them carries a voltage for every metre above the ground. The positive charge that accumulates around the Flower induces a negative charge in its petals. When the positively charged bee arrives at the negatively charged Flower, the pollen literally jumps from the Flower to the bee as the bee approaches the Flower. Research also suggests that bees landing Influences the Flower’s electrical charge For a short period of time and that this change may signal to the next bee that the Flower has just been visited.