WHY DO THESE BEES STAB PLANTS? We know a lot about the way bees and other pollinators impact our lives. We have to because without them we Wouldnt have things like almonds and apples and blueberries. Yet there is something we have completely missed about the humble bumblebee. And it might give them a leg up in weathering climate change. In a paper published in 2020 in the journal Science, researchers reported a previously undocumented behavior in bumblebees. In tough times, when the colony is hungry, bumblebees will use their mouthparts to deliberately damage the leaves of plants that haven't yet flowered which seems like a bad idea when you need those plants for food. The researchers observed the bees and concluded that they’re not consuming pieces of the plant or taking them back to their colonies. Instead, they appear to be damaging leaves because it induces the plant to flower sooner. The researchers found that bee-damaged plants flower up to thirty days earlier t...