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 nature, the quest to survive and spread is essential — and that’s certainly true for flowers. We might see them as vibrant harbingers of spring or precursors to juicy tomatoes, but from the ...

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 ...

For flowering plants, reproduction is a question of the birds and the bees. Attracting the right pollinator can be a matter ...

Amanda Blum is a freelancer who writes about smart home technology, gardening, and food preservation. Previously, Amanda has worked as a technology strategist specializing in problem solving and ...

A blowfly on lavender flowers. Flies are the unsung heroes of pollination. They visit flowers to stoke up on energy-rich nectar and protein-rich pollen and transport pollen from flower to flower in ...

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 ...