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Bumblebees need pollen from flowers to survive. But increasingly, the creatures are waking up earlier in the year when flowers have not yet bloomed due to the climate crisis. Nature appears to be finding away, though, Gizmodo reported.

According to research published in Science on Thursday, bees have developed a way to force plants to flower faster, providing yet more proof that bees are smart and resilient as hell. The scientists found that bumblebees nibble on the leaves of plants that haven’t yet bloomed, which results in punctures that lead the plants to flower 30 days sooner on average.

The team of Swiss researchers first noticed this behavior in their lab. While they were conducting an unrelated experiment, they saw bees biting off bits of plants without a clear reason why. Their interest piqued, they further investigated the phenomenon in the scientific literature but found little research had been done.

“We found that others had also observed such behaviors, but no one had explored what the bees were doing to the plants or reported an effect on flower production,” Mark Mescher, a professor at the university ETH Zürich and study author, said in a statement.

To learn more, the scientists placed hungry bumblebees into mesh cages full of unflowered tomato and mustard plants. Before long, they found the bees using their mandibles to pierce the plants. The team also tried to replicate the bees’ moves by taking razor blades to the plants’ leaves.

The experiment found that all of the punctured plants bloomed more quickly, but the ones the bees damaged produced flowers weeks earlier than the ones the scientists cut. For tomato plants, it was 30 days while mustard plants damaged by the bees saw flowers bloom 14 days earlier.

This suggests that either a chemical in the bees saliva speeds the flowering process, “or our manual imitation of the damage wasn’t accurate enough,” Consuelo De Moraes, a study co-author a professor at the university ETH Zürich and study author, said in a statement.

To investigate whether or not these findings held true in the wild where plants are more spread apart and scarce, the team also conducted an experiment in outdoor bumblebee colonies. Sure enough, the bees exhibited the same behavior, especially when fewer flowers were in bloom around them. And it wasn’t just captive-bred bees from the lab which punctured plant leaves. The scientists observed two species of wild bumblebees doing it, too.

The study suggests that the bees developed the behavior to acclimate to conditions when pollen isn’t around. That’s good news, and not just for the creatures themselves. Because bees pollinate plants and help them grow, many species depend on them for food. That includes us. About a third of the food humans eat every day relies on pollination, mainly by bees.

“An encouraging interpretation of the new findings is that behavioral adaptations of flower-visitors can provide pollination systems with more plasticity and resilience to cope with climate change than hitherto suspected,” Lars Chittka, a study co-author and professor at the Queen Mary University of London, wrote in a letter in Science which accompanied the new study.

How much this coping mechanism will help bees survive climate chaos, though, is an open question. A February report found that due to changes in the climate, bumblebee populations’ chance of survival in any given place declined by an average of over 30 percent over the course of just one human generation.

More research will have to be done to determine how much impact the behavior has, so we can’t rely on bees’ cleverness to ensure they survive. We also have to draw down carbon emissions to ensure they aren’t subject to even more challenging conditions.

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Speaking in an exclusive interview with Iran Daily, Abdolreza Bigonah added the major destinations of Iran’s overseas sales of honey are neighbors as well as the Persian Gulf littoral states.

He noted that Iran’s honey is unique in the world in terms of quality.

Bigonah said Iran is among the world’s top 10 states in terms of the amount of honey production, adding Iranian honey’s quality is unique in the region in the light of the country’s wide floral diversity, green highlands, arid, semi-arid and cold climate and outstanding feature making it possible to find the climate typical of each of the four seasons in different parts of it concurrently, at any given time of the year.

Given the country’s favorable climatic condition, Iran has a high potential in the fields of beekeeping and honey production, and thus is capable of boosting exports through thoughtful planning, he stressed.

He said the honey produced in the northwestern Iranian province of Ardebil, known as ‘Sabalan’ (named after a mountain in the province), has the highest quality among its domestic counterparts and a great international reputation.

“This is because of Sabalan region’s special vegetation and the fact that the area is home to certain flowers, such as thyme, astragalus and chamomile.”

He listed the nutritional benefits of natural honey as boosting immune and digestive systems, warming the body and killing bacteria.

Iran is home to over 2,000 kinds of wildflowers and mountain flowers, Bigonah said, adding the diversity of the honey produced in the country is proportional to the number of flower types found in each region.

He stressed that since honey bees gather pollen from different flowers, each kind of honey is named after the region where it is produced.

The association’s head listed Iran’s major honey production hubs as the provinces of East Azarbaijan, West Azarbaijan, Ardebil (all three located in northwestern Iran) and Mazandaran (northern Iran).

He said other provinces, such as Lorestan (western Iran) and Kurdestan (northwestern Iran), are also active in the field of honey production, describing as traditional methods used by producers in these regions.

Bigonah said in Ardebil, however, beekeepers migrate to different special areas in each season to increase their output.

“At present, there are 7.15 million bee colonies or beehives across the country and over 182,000 people are involved in the field of honey production.”

He put at between 85,000 tons and 90,000 tons the average annual honey production in Iran, predicting that the country’s yearly honey output will amount to almost 85,000 tons by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 19, 2020).

Bigonah said since Iran’s surplus honey production, on average, stands at between 15,000 tons and 20,000 tons per year, the product is sold at a price lower than its real value in the domestic market.

He put it close to 600 grams the annual per capita honey consumption in Iran.

Bigonah added annually, 7,000 tons of honey is produced in Ardebil, saying given the large number of packaging factories operational in the province, other cities send their honey to Ardebil to be packaged.

Commenting on the availability of fake honey in the Iranian market, he said that honey produced by reputable domestic companies is believed to be natural and pure as such firms’ products and performance are regularly controlled and supervised by the Iranian National Standards Organization, Iran’s Food and Drug Administration (IFDA) and Iran Veterinary Organization.

“However, some individuals, whose activities are not controlled or supervised by any state organization, may produce fake honey for the sake of reaping additional profits.”

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