There is recent research that can be used to show that insects (or otherwise) do manage to pollinate some
daylily flowers even though hybridizers have hand pollinated them.
A daylily hybridizer crossed diploids with tetraploids and tetraploids with diploids to produce triploids for some research. The researchers determined whether the seedlings produced from the crosses were triploids but found that some were diploids and some were tetraploids. That means something other than the hand pollination of the hybridizer produced those seedlings - insects or errors by the hybridizer at some stage of the process. The most likely is natural pollinations by insects. They were responsible for 16% of the seedlings.
The percentage is likely to be much higher in specific cases where natural insect pollinations are more likely due to the characteristics of the particular daylily.
