What happens to a flower after a bee visits it?

A bee lands on a flower, wiggles about, and buzzes away. The flower still looks the same. What happens to a flower after a bee visits it? Let's follow an apple flower to find out.

The bee visits because the apple flower offers sweet liquid to drink. As the bee reaches into the flower, its fuzzy body brushes against the flower's middle.

The flower makes pollen, tiny powdery grains that help flowers make new plants. Some pollen sticks to the bee's fuzz as it brushes past. The bee now carries something besides its sweet drink.

The bee flies to another apple flower for more food. It carries pollen along on its body, much as your socks might carry grass bits across a garden.

Some pollen rubs off onto a sticky tip in this flower's middle. That sticky tip holds the pollen where it can help the flower. A visit doesn't always leave the pollen a flower needs.

With the right pollen in place, what do you think happens next? Does the flower change all at once, or does something begin quietly inside? The first changes happen out of sight.

A pollen grain grows a tiny tube down into the flower. This tube makes a path to the place where a new plant can begin.

A tiny part from the pollen travels down that tube. It joins a tiny part waiting inside the flower. Together, they start a new plant, much too small for you to see.

Now seeds begin to grow inside the flower. Seeds are little packages holding baby plants and food for them.

As the seeds grow inside, the flower's petals fade and fall away. The petals have finished their job of helping attract visiting bees. Losing them doesn't mean the flower's story has ended.

The part of the apple flower around the seeds grows bigger. It develops into fruit, the part of a plant that holds seeds. Here, that fruit becomes an apple.

The apple fruit keeps growing around the seeds, sheltering them as they develop. Those seeds need time to become ready for life beyond the apple. The bee's short visit can begin weeks of quiet growing.

Pollen, seeds, fruit. After a bee brings the right pollen, a flower can grow seeds and develop into fruit.

Next time you see an apple, you can remember the flower and the bee in its beginning.