Olive (Olea europaea L.) trees produce many more flowers than fruit. In an “on” year, an adult olive tree may produce as many as 500,000 flowers, but 98% of them will drop before ripening. This waste of resources, better invested in fruit reaching maturation, needs an explanation. Different not mutually exclusive hypotheses elucidating the possible significance of heavy flowering followed by massive and premature fruit abscission are analyzed and confronted based on previously published works as well as on more recent own observations on olive reproductive biology. The results suggest that olive trees selectively abort fruit to increase the quality of the seed in the surviving fruit. A sizable portion of the flowers seems also to enhance the total fitness of the plant by pollen export. On the contrary, the hypotheses alluding to resource limitation, pollination deficits, pollinator attraction or extra flowers constituting an ovary reserve, as the ultimate functions of massive flower production must be rejected in olive. Consequences on olive orchard management are discussed.