Study
What’s the ‘buzz’ about? The ecology and evolutionary significance of buzz-pollination
De Luca, Paul A.; Vallejo-Marín, Mario
Current Opinion in Plant Biology, 2013
A review of buzz pollination — in which a bee grips a flower and vibrates its flight muscles to shake pollen out of tubular anthers — covering which plants require it, which bees perform it, and the acoustics involved.
- Studied in
- Solanum, Bombus
- Sample size
- review of buzz-pollinated plant and bee taxa
Roughly 6% of flowering plant species, including tomatoes, aubergines, blueberries and cranberries, hold pollen in anthers that release it only under vibration. Bumblebees and many solitary bees can buzz; honey bees essentially cannot.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Buzz pollination is a widespread, mechanically specific interaction that partitions plants between bee groups.
How NatureHQ reads it
The single most useful fact for dismantling "bees pollinate everything". A honey bee is physically incapable of extracting pollen from a tomato flower — it can visit, and nothing happens. Commercial tomato growing depends on bumblebees for exactly this reason. It is also the clearest case of visiting not equalling pollinating, which is the distinction the whole pollination page turns on.
- A review; the proportion of buzz-pollinated species is an estimate.
- Which bee species can buzz effectively is incompletely catalogued.
- Acoustic measurements vary widely in method between studies.
Why a honey bee cannot pollinate a tomato
Some flowers refuse to release their pollen to most visitors. What does it take to get it out?
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: Cell PressPublished in a Cell Press journal.
doi.org/10.1016/j.pbi.2013.05.002
This reference was resolved automatically against Crossref on 2026-08-11.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-10.