Why bees are so busy around watermelons

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Watermelons have separate male and female flowers on each plant. Pollen is big and sticky and not windborne; our pollinators have to do the work for us. It’s fascinating how many visits a flower needs to get fertilized – eight visits from a pollinator for a seeded and twenty for seedless varieties. Interestingly, native bees do a better job than the non-native honeybee, and planting bright flowers in fields with watermelons attracts them. At the watermelon planting at Clemson’s Edisto REC, just retired Gilbert Miller has made fields even more attractive to both two-legged and six-legged individuals by planting colorful rows of zinnias and other flowering plants. A lot goes into getting this plant, native to Africa, from seed to a tasty treat in your refrigerator.