Honeybees and Ozone

Honeybee near Milk Thistle Flower

Most people like flowers.  Of course the lovely scent evolved, not to make us happy, but to attract pollinators like honeybees.  Honyebees, of course, are attracted to flowers.  The insect pollinators can see color from the flower petals and they can smell the scent.  The honeybee eats the nectar from flower in order to make honey.  In the process of getting theri nectar the honeybee gets pollen on thier body and take the pollen to neighboring flowers.  Pollen is like a sperm cell in an animal.  When the honeybee brings the pollen to a flower of the.same species then a pollen tube grows from the pollen and it grows down to the ovum or egg. . . deep in the flower.  The pollen sends its DNA down and  fertilizes the egg in the other flower.  Again, this only works if the flower is  of the same species of plant.  There is research from 2015 that shows that Ozone levels in the atmosphere can affect how far flower scent travels.   The research showed that this affected how well honeybees could find flowers in urban areas, where cars etc. give off a great deal of ozone.  

By the way, Ozone is O3 or three oxygen molecules bonded together.  Up high in the atmosphere ozone help blocs some of the n's energy.  Down low, where we live, ozone is a problem.   Ozone is produced naturally in the upper atmosphere by ultraviolet radiation   Another way ozone is created is by lightning moving through the air.  The lighning makes the O2 add an extra oxygen and we get O3 molecules.  This is why when there is a thunder storm there is that nice smell.  We are smelling ozone molecules.