I have an allergy to pollen.

I have hay fever.

And that's actually rather useful for forensics and so on.

I am allergic to pollen.

I'm allergic to pollen.

How does life make the most of things?

(Laughter)

Tom has hay fever.

Tom has a pollen allergy.

The vase burst into fragments.

The vase was broken to pieces.

The vase crashed to pieces.

Very showy, to attract lots of insects to do its bidding.

But pollen forensics can be very subtle.

Evolution works that way.

So, different species of plants grow in different places, and some pollen carries further than others.

The vase broke into fragments.

It went up and down, and it really started to accelerate around 70,000 years ago.

They are, you know they get paid for their services.

And there are flowers that are self infertile.

How do you know?

And they get up to all sorts of tricks.

To my surprise, it did not correlate.

And of course, bees are not the only important factor here.

They build up a static electric charge and the pollen jumps on them and helps spread that pollen from bloom to bloom.

So this, for example, when you see bees flying around these little plants, and they're collecting pollen, those pollen grains that they're collecting, they pack into their legs and they take it back to the hive, and that's what makes the beehive, the wax in the beehive.

What the honey bee does it pollinates, takes nectar from the flower, pollinates another flower, cross pollinates.

The vase fell to the floor and shattered.

A lot of people are dealing with hay fever now.

For example, some deter pests, some help drainage.

Now that's not just deaf children.

So flies love this.

It's like a little Disneyland for them. It's not like what we see.

It's like a little Disney Land for them. It's not like what we see.

And remember that all our cereal crops are grasses as well.

It's also very biologically active, as anyone with hay fever will understand.

A different pollen signature, if you like, or a different pollen fingerprint.

And bees are very faithful.

The vase fell from the table and crashed to pieces.

That's probably true of humans as well, mostly.

(Laughter)

Perhaps there's more pollen in the city.

So in an apple orchard, for instance, you'll have rows of 10 apples of one variety, and then you have another apple tree that's a different type of pollen.

My story is actually not about plant propagation, but about pollen itself.

They get paid by pollen and nectar, to move that male sperm, the pollen, from flower to flower.