Cheeky Bumblebees Adapt to Climate Change by Tricking Plants

A new study has found bumblebees to have a trick up their sleeves that scientists never knew about before: if they’re pollen-deprived, the bees can force plants to bloom a whole month earlier than they otherwise would!

The bees puncture leaves of plants closest to their nests to trick them into blooming an average of 30 says earlier, if the only ones that have bloomed are farther away than they’d like.

The study findings suggest that bumblebees may continue thriving despite climate change threats. “With climate change, fundamentally, the environment becomes less predictable,” says study co-author Mark Mescher, a chemical ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. “But what we found might tend to mitigate disruptions due to climate change.”