Learn the secrets of bees & butterflies

Despite their size, these tiny pollinators are endlessly fascinating. Helen Bostock and Sophie Collins answer some key questions

Despite their size, these tiny pollinators are fascinating

QWhy do butterflies love buddleia? A Buddleja davidii flourishes even in poor soil and shade, and can be found everywhere from railway embankments to formal gardens. Its tubular flowers are perfectly adapted to the butterfly’s long proboscis (tongue) and they can perch on the large flowerheads as they feed. Flowering prolifically, over a long season, buddleias are scented and full of nectar.

Although many moth species use buddleia as their caterpillar food plant, butterflies have wider-ranging tastes. The notorious cabbage white lays waste to brassicas; green-veined white and orange tip butterflies favour lady’s smock (Cardamine pratensis) or garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata); commas like golden hop (Humulus lupulus ‘Aureus’); and both holly and ivy play host to holly blues.

QIs pollen as important as nectar?

A Pollinators need nectar to nourish them in their journey from one flower to another, but during the pollination process, many also collect pollen for their young to eat and, on occasion, to eat themselves.

● Nectar is the sugary, quick-fix food for instant energy.

● Pollen is packed with protein, along with a range of other useful nutrients such as amino acids.

Each plays a crucial part within the insect food web, but they have different roles. Nectar-feeding butterflies and moths pollinate by accident – they don’t eat or collect pollen. Bees, on the other hand, mostly drink nectar while out and about and collect pollen for both larvae and adult bees back at home. Collection methods vary, from gathering it in pollen baskets on their legs to eating it, then regurgitating it up to stock up their larval cells back at the nest. Other insects eat pollen, too, including some hoverflies and the tiny, metallic pollen beetles sometimes found in large numbers on sweet peas.

Q Why is pollen always yellow? A It isn’t! Although the vast majority of pollen is yellow, it also comes in blue, orange and white. It was once thought that yellow appealed most strongly to pollinators, who can’t see colours on the red spectrum. Yet wind-pollinated plants mostly have yellow pollen, too. Nowadays it’s thought that the yellow is a side-effect of the pollen’s sticky coating, which protects the grain from UV-B rays, like a kind of sunscreen. If pollen deteriorates before it does its job, it’s more likely to form a part of a seed, which could have undesirable mutations. Q Do honeybees bathe? A Honeybees don’t take baths as such – they use the hairs on their legs like brushes to shed excess dirt and pollen. However, in hot weather you might see them drinking rainwater from a dish in the garden: they take some back to the hive to keep the interior cool, share it with other bees and help nursing bees create royal jelly (made from pollen, nectar and water). A honeybee hive in midsummer may need between 1 and 4 litres (2-8 pints) per day. Worker bees save the water in their crops (‘honey sacks’ in their abdomen), then when back at the hive they regurgitate it. Once they’ve found a water source they like, the workers may visit in great numbers, leaving pheromone ‘markers’ to help their hive colleagues locate it, and performing a ritual ‘waggle dance’.