How flowers use electricity to communicate with bees

The world of bees is truly fascinating and in this brilliant short video, David Attenborough explains how electricity enables flowers and bees to communicate in quite a sophisticated and meaningful way.

Plants are rooted to the ground and have a small negative charge the higher up the plant you go the greater the electric charge this creates an electric field around the flow we can't see it but we can detect it with the appropriate instruments. Bees have a positive charge and friction while flying causes them to lose electrons. As a Bee approaches a flower it charges the electrical field around the flower and the positive and negative fields immediately cancel each other out. As this happens there are two very surprising consequences firstly the plant's negatively charged pollen actually jumps across onto the positively charged bee. Secondly the plant now has a changed electrical field and when another bee comes along it detects this altered electrical signature and avoids the flower the plant is in effect telling the bee that it has no nectar and to go elsewhere and come back later.

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