Plant Structure And Function

Have a look at the food I've got here on this counter. Do you know what these foods have in common? Some are fruits, some are vegetables, some are nuts, some are even seeds. It doesn't seem like they have anything in common, right? But did you know that they all come from flowering plants? That's right, flowers. Flowering plants come in all shapes and sizes. In fact, scientists think there could be almost 400,000 different types of flowering plants around the world. That includes crop plants that produce our food. And most flowering plants start out the same way, as a seed. Making a seed isn't as simple as it sounds. A powdery grain called pollen has to travel from one flower to another flower. Once it reaches that flower, the pollen may need to find its way inside the flower to fertilize it. Pollen grains from one single flower can end up fertilizing hundreds more flowers. So how can a pollen grain travel from one flower all the way to another flower? It would need the help of some sort of insect. Maybe one that travels from flower to flower all day long, attracted by a sweet food that's inside it. What's that? Oh, right, a honeybee. A honeybee visits flowers all day long to collect nectar, a tiny bit at a time. How much nectar do you think a honeybee collects in its entire lifetime? Well, the answer is just a few drops. Then the bee brings the nectar back to the beehive, where other bees turn it into honey. Every time a honeybee goes into a flower to suck up that nectar, some pollen grains get stuck on the hairs on its legs. When the bee lands on a new flower, some pollen rubs off its body, fertilizing the flower and helping a new seed grow. Did you know that nearly one third of the food we eat wouldn't be pollinated without the help of bees? So what do you think would happen if bees stopped pollinating flowers? Recently, beekeepers and farmers have noticed that bees seem to be dying in record numbers. Brett Ady's bee farm is the largest one in America. Brett raises thousands of bees in hives, collects their honey, and sells the bees. In the winter of 2013, 42% of Brett's bees died of a mysterious illness. It hit the whole nation. Bees were lost everywhere. And we don't know what to do. Some scientists blame mites, tiny creatures that live off plants and animals. Others say that the mixture of chemicals in pesticides is to blame. Since most farmers depend on bees to pollinate their crops, the recent bee shortage is very serious. This year was probably the worst that I've ever seen it. Whenever your whole crop is made in one month right there, and your beekeeper just calls and says, hey, I don't have the bees, it kind of turns into a panic. Get on the phone and call as many people as they can, trying to find anybody that may have them. To prepare for more bee shortages, some farmers are reserving bees from beekeepers five years in advance. They know that without bees, they'd have no food to sell. So the next time you see a bee going from flower to flower, remember these insects are the hidden heroes behind much of the food we eat.