Fertilizers may change the way flowers 'look' to bees and discourage them from pollinating, a study suggests.
on Wednesday, found that the fertilizers change these electric fields and bees seem to find these changes very weird.In the study, scientists investigated whether the fertilizers affected the color, smell, or electric charge of the flower for bumblebees, a docile species of bees that are easy to use in experiments.
There are a number of cues that bees use to decide which flower to land on. Like us, they are attracted by certain smells and colors, but bees rely on an extra feature: the electric field of a flower. As bees fly through the air, their bodies become positively charged. When they came across negatively-charged flowers, their small bodies sense the flower's electric field like a magnet.
When they pollinate, the bees change the flowers' electric field. The next bees that come along will be able to tell from the electric field that these flowers are likely tapped out, and will skip them entirely.The study found that spraying synthetic fertilizers onto a field didn't change the color or smell of the flower.
But it did affect"magnitude and dynamics" of the electric field – essentially the way the flower's electric fields would look to the bees, Ellard Hunting, a study author and biophysicist from the University of Bristol,"If you imagine that in terms of vision, it's like that light is too bright and it's blinding them," Ellard Hunting, a study author and biophysicist from the University of Bristol,Bees aren't only attracted to the negative charge of the flower –...
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