No Stupid Questions

Bees make excellent pollinators because most of their life is spent collecting pollen, a source of protein that they feed to their developing offspring. When a bee lands on a flower, the hairs all over the bees' body attract pollen grains through electrostatic forces.

Basically plants have coevolved with these pollinating insects. Plants that can develop the best pollen that sticks to these insects are able to reproduce more successfully. While bees, as the example, are collecting it as there food. Bees are not "helping" the plant knowingly, its more of the plant is hitching a ride.

https://www.canr.msu.edu/nativeplants/pollination/

Bees are messy. When they go to the flower, it gets all over them.

The flowers are designed such that the pollen does this…. Because the flowers that do spread better. The bees are just there to get food, but while they’re going about getting food, they’re making an awful mess, and the flowers benefit.

This is funny, and really speaks to a fundamental issue we have during education as to assigning agency for what amount to"random" events.

OP is presumably educated and intelligent, and the takeaway they had was that bees "are pollinators" which is true with regard to our interest in them, but definitely implies agency that they are intentionally pollinating, which (I am pretty sure) isn't true.

It feels like the same question that gets asked in a million different ways of "why did XYZ evolve that way when ABCD?" (Because evolution is random and tends toward selecting for energy conservation. Not to "achieve" some specific goal.)

They aren't farming, they’re foraging, and have evolved symbiotic relationships through evolution. The plants get a benefit by getting pollinated, the bees get a benefit by having more flowers to feed on.

Since they need pollen, bees who developed those little hairs are/were able to out-compete bees who didn’t have them. They're able to carry a lot more pollen and incidentally transfer it, spreading it around, so the new bees are better pollinators. That helps plants produce a lot more flowers, so it’s truly a symbiotic relationship- one would not exist without the other. Since wasps are omnivores, the evolutionary pressure to specialize isn't as strong.

IIrc, there are some wasps who have specialized relationships with certain plants and flowers too, driven by evolution- the flowers depend on the wasps, and the wasps depend on the flowers.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert.

With that said, I believe it's mostly an accidental transfer as the pollen is basically a dust that easily carries on flying bugs legs.

If I'm wrong and experts know a more scientific answer, feel free to downvote me into oblivion.

i remember learning about how (some?) flowers are shaped to sprinkle pollen on the back of the insect. They may not need to "consciously" carry pollen, it spreads, it's on their body.

nectar is supplied in small doses to keep the insect (or the bird) working

insects or birds are just trying to get more nectar (?)

First I've read "planets" rather than "plants" and got really curios what I've missed in the meantime.

Bro out here thinking bees are fucking farmers, fucking hell.