"Warm Bee Food. Biologists report that honeybees can discriminate between food at different temperatures, which may help them find the warm, sugar-rich nectar or high-protein pollen produced by many flowers. During the day, the researchers said, temperatures in the centers of daffodils can be up to eight degrees Celsius warmer than they are outside the flowers."
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/11/25/science/112509_SCIENCEPIX_6.html
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A discussion forum for daffodil enthusiasts around the world.
There are all sorts of interesting relationships between plants and insects and the creatures that feed on plants.
If you think about it a little daffodils evolved to be pollinated by cold blooded insects. Photos of daffodils blooms often appear to be covered in diamond dust that reflects the sunlight back to the camera lens.
This reflected light also would bounce back to the body of an insect that is attracted to the pollen of the daffodils. On cold windy days the trumpet of a daffodil will provide the insects with a wind break as the trumpets always face away from a breeze. This also protects the pollen and nectar from getting washed away during a light rain. The longer an insect is enticed to stay inside the trumpet and the pollen the better chance of the bloom getting pollinated.
While on sunny days the blooms turn to face into the direct sunlight. These blooms would then warm up considerably higher than the surrounding air temperatures. The blooms facing the sun would be solar reflectors just like you see folks using the aluminum reflectors to get a better sun tan in winter. Deep wide trumpets facing the sun will be like a mini solar oven heating the darker pollen making a it a more appetizing meal to an insect chilled by the cool spring weather.
Paper whites produce massive amounts of scent to attract all sorts of flying insects day and night. But their stark white blooms reflect the feeble light from the moon allowing the night flying moths to easily locate them. There are about 8 times the number of species of moths as compared to day flying species of butterflies.
In the photo you see a drift of the jonquil Sweetness where the leaves above the snow have collected heat from the sun and the exchange of food produced by the sun and exchanged with the water from the roots has actually heated the area close to the leaves, stems and bulbs to the point where it melted the snow.
The bulb and stem nematode migrates back and forth in the daffodil bulbs, stem and leaves but prefers to breed and reproduce I believe in the leaf area of the daffodil as these are warmer due to sunshine rather than staying down deeper in the cooler soils where the daffodil roots are. These nematodes produce spickels or bulges in the leaves later in the season where the nematodes lay their eggs and start the life cycle all over again.
Insects have certain temperature ranges where they prefer to live just as we humans try to heat and cool our living spaces….
I keep hives of European Honey Bees and they will gather pollen from large drifts of n. Jonquilla but I seldom ever see them on any other type of daffodil. Keith Kridler Mt. Pleasant, Texas