You may have heard that bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly. That’s a myth actually, as any flying bumblebee will tell you. The science of their flight is now understood.

But the bees hold another mystery that could affect human agriculture.

Bumblebees hibernate over winter, and when they emerge in the spring, they’re hungry.

But what if the plants they rely on for pollen and nectar aren’t yet producing? The bees actually force them to do it.

Like their honeybee cousins, bumblebees scout their environment to identify the best flowers.

Scientists noticed a strange behavior on plants that were not flowering: the bees bit a pattern of tiny holes in the leaves. Soon after, the plants bloomed—up to 1 month earlier than normal.

Once they started flowering, the bees stopped biting them and started harvesting the nectar.

Researchers tried to replicate the bees’ technique by making their own tiny holes in the leaves of different plants. They bloomed earlier too, but only by about a week.

How the bees produced their better results is still a mystery. Perhaps they’re leaving behind a biochemical that accelerates the plants’ chemistry.

If humans can figure out how they do it, it’s possible we could force crops to bloom earlier, extending growing seasons, perhaps adding another growing season in the year, thus increasing annual crop yields.

Leave it to the bumblebee, that impossible flyer, to show us how to bend the laws of nature.