So what had happened? Edmond told Bellier-Beaumont that he had found a way of fertilising the vanilla flowers by hand, which he had based on a method for hand-pollinating watermelon plants that ...

home of the Melipona bee –- the only insect capable of pollinating vanilla flowers. In fact, during the early 20th century, Mexico was the world's leading producer of this regal spice.

It can take years to get a harvest, and the flowers must be hand-pollinated when grown outside of their native range. However ...

It's a difficult spice to cultivate, extracted from the delicate vanilla orchid flower. As a result, vanilla is the second most expensive spice in the world, after saffron. "The other big ...