Retorts

Busy Bees Revisited

Thanks to Peter Heenan [Retorts, July] for mentioning the early work of Eric Godley on mistletoe pollination by native bees.

Our work [Native Bees with New tricks, April] was on Peraxilla tetrapetala, where the flowers can't self-open and normally rely on birds to pop the buds open. That report was a short version of our Nature article (1996, Vol. 384, pg 615) and described how solitary native bees can lever open these flowers.

Interested readers may care to consult a longer version of the mistletoe pollination work, published in the New Zealand Journal of Botany in 1997 (Vol. 35, pg 345) where we cited Eric's observations on bees opening Alepis flavida flowers. In that paper we show that Alepis is different on two counts from Peraxilla: firstly the flowers self-open, and secondly they routinely self-pollinate. Therefore bees prematurely opening buds is of less consequence for Alepis. However, the whole discussion emphasises the importance of careful early work by skilled scientists like Dr Godley.

I would also like to record our thanks to Sandra Anderson of Auckland University for calling our attention to the Godley reference in the first place.

Dr Dave Kelly, University of Canterbury