The vanilla bean-evolutionary quandry

[Rampant.A.I.]

Co-evolution.....?
Those bees and vines sure were lucky to make themselves at exactly the same time.
Whoda thought.. Maybe a blind date?

co·ev·o·lu·tion
ˌkōevəˈlo͞oSHən,-ēvə-/
nounBIOLOGY
the influence of closely associated species on each other in their evolution.

Your argument assumes:
1. Evolution does not take place
2. Therefore the plant and bee have always been in the same form there are now.

The more likely scenario: The bee and food source co-evolved over a long period of time, thus appear in the form they are today.

The Vanilla Bean orchid is estimated to be 60-70 million years old. Do you think it might have changed in that amount of time?

Bees, the largest (>16,000 species) and most important radiation of pollinating insects, originated in early to mid-Cretaceous, roughly in synchrony with the angiosperms (flowering plants). Understanding the diversification of the bees and the coevolutionary history of bees and angiosperms requires a well supported phylogeny of bees (as well as angiosperms). We reconstructed a robust phylogeny of bees at the family and subfamily levels using a data set of five genes (4,299 nucleotide sites)

http://www.pnas.org/content/103/41/15118.full

Do you think some of the 16,000 species bees may have adapted to the plants they evolved to feed from?