From the Ground Up: Honey bees

From the Ground Up: Honey bees

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) - Honey bees are a vital part of our ecosystem, responsible for pollinating 80% of all flowering plants, including more than 130 fruits and vegetables.

While foraging for nectar and pollen, honeybees unintentionally transfer pollen from plant to plant, enabling fertilization and seed production.

“It’s a really important process because we don’t have self-pollinating plants. So they really rely on bees to do some of that work. Bees are really efficient and really effective about doing that because you have a massive workforce going out collecting nectar and pollen and doing the pollination for you,” honey bee expert, Garett Slater explained.

Tiny but mighty - on average, a single honey bee pollinates nearly 5,000 plants every single day. This results in $15 billion worth of honey bee-pollinated crops in the United States every year.

“One-third of what we eat is directly pollinated or impacted by honeybees. So the major one is almonds. Without honey bees, we just wouldn’t have almonds all together. So a lot of beekeepers are in, you know, California right now pollinating the almonds. So about 2 1/2 million colonies right now,” Slater said.

While California bees are working hard to pollinate over 1.3 million acres of almond orchards, here in the Lone Star State, our bees are busy with something a little sweeter.

“When you think about Texas, we have watermelons. So, honey bees, while watermelons don’t need honey bees, they can increase the yield and the size of these watermelons. So, bees are really important for that,” Garret Slater said.

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