Val explains how pollinators search out all-important sweet rewards early in the year
Nectar is the insect equivalent of Lucozade and I have a soft spot for that fizzy glucose drink. My dear old dad, long gone now, used to buy me a bottle if I was off colour. It arrived wrapped in sunshine-yellow cellophane and when you unwrapped it, there was a gold foil cap. This was jewel-like and I perfected a way of making a lion (of sorts) from the wrapping and cap. It was worth trying to pretend that you were approaching a major health crisis, just to get your hands on one of those fabulous bottles. Of course, I probably wasn’t ill at all for I was a robust child who was hardly ever (genuinely) out-of-sorts.
Imagine, if when you unwrapped your fizzy orange drink, you found a variable concoction instead of the real McCoy. Some of it would be watery and low in glucose, so it wouldn’t do much to up the heart rate. Others would be middling, nothing to write home about, and some would be super-strength energy boosters. That’s the situation pollinators face when they visit flowers, because that sugary water isn’t consistently sugarrich. It varies, although the average for all flowers is generally 40% sugar.
Not all flowers bloom equally for pollinators
Take the glorious crown imperial, Fritillaria imperialis, a plant I struggle to grow well here. It has very weak nectar containing only 4% sugars. I say sugars because nectar is generally a mixture of sucrose, fructose and glucose. |t also contains small amounts of amino acids, proteins, organic acids, phosphates, vitamins and enzymes as well. At the other end of the spectrum Origanum vulgare, or marjoram, is power-packed with a 76 % sugar concentration. Butterflies actively target flowers with highly-concentrated nectar so, if you want to know if a flower’s rich in nectar, make a note of which flowers your butterflies visit. Buddleia, for instance, produces honeyed nectar in abundance and one midsummerflowering purple and pink marjoram, named ‘Herrenhausen’, is always a magnet for small tortoiseshells.
The other problem pollinators face is accessibility
This is because their tongues vary in length so some flowers are easier to reach than others. Slender tubular flowers, such as comfrey and honeysuckle, are only accessible to longer-tongued pollinators. Shorttongued bees have to resort to robbing the nectar by biting into the base of the tube from the outside. Tell-tale holes appear. It’s the equivalent of me not being able to open my much-desired bottle of Lucozade. I will find a way!
This difference in tongue length and the different times the queens emerge is a sensible way of making sure that flowers cannot be visited by all. The early bumblebee, Bombus hortorum, has a long t
