"often avoid collecting pollen from New World crops
(corn, sunflower, cucurbits) if there are Old World plants within flight
range."

I have seen honey bees working sweet corn for pollen vigorously.  I have never seen them working yellow dent field corn for pollen.  I do not see native pollinators paying much attention to field corn either.  I do not remember about natives on sweet corn.  Different sugar content perhaps?  I grow a few squash in my garden.  I see honey bees and natives all over those flowers.  I have a number of old Norway Spruce trees.  Those trees literally rain pollen.  The amount is unbelievable for a few days.  I have never seen a single bee of any kind working that pollen.  I see flowers my wife grows such as day lillies, Hibiscus or iris loaded with pollen and no insects at all on them.  And other flowers such as St John's Wort with hundreds of bees of all kinds on one bush all day.

Taste or odor or texture must have something major to do with making some pollens very attractive and others not attractive at all.

Dick

" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken

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