When blooms appear on our fruit trees or vegetable gardens, we happily anticipate a bountiful harvest. If the bees help by doing their pollinating job, the fruits and vegetables should begin to ...

In the most basic of descriptions, pollination is the process of transferring pollen from the anthers (the male part of the flower) to the stigma (the female part of the flower). Some plants have ...

It’s almost impossible to imagine a world without chocolate. Yet cacao trees, which are the source of chocolate, are vulnerable. I am a passionate chocolate lover and an entomologist who studies cacao ...

Insect-pollination of flowering plants is responsible for the majority of the world’s flowering diversity and is an essential part of plant reproduction. Flowers have bright colours, smells and nectar ...

Out in a field, tomato plants are pollinated either by wind shaking flowers or by bees, which fly into the flowers and vibrate, releasing the pollen into the air. But inside a greenhouse or indoor ...

Saving seed is a selective process — you don’t need to save seed from every plant in your garden. Monitoring blossom times, ...

Using a mobile stamen to slap away insect visitors maximizes pollination and minimizes costs to flowers, a study shows. For centuries scientists have observed that when a visiting insect's tongue ...

Flowers pollinated by honeybees make fewer and lower-quality seeds than flowers visited by other pollinators. That could be because honeybees spend more time buzzing between flowers of the same plant ...