The Importance of Pollinators

Toni Leland

Native Milkweed & pollinators

The University of Connecticut has a terrific agriculture and natural resources college, offering
educational events to the public on a regular basis. I attended the Native Plants and Pollinators Conference this week and learned so much about pollinators.

Most folks immediately think of bees when they hear the term "pollinator," but even though the bee-types make up the largest segment of the term–more than 70% of the world's plants depend on pollination by bees (The Bee-Friendly Garden, Frey & LeBuhn, 2016)–we also depend on butterflies and wasps, flies and hummingbirds to keep our plants and trees flourishing.

Stonecrop Sedum Feast

The current interest in the decline of honeybees and bumblebees is growing as homeowners learn more about planting the landscape with pollinator-friendly and pollinator-critical flowering plants, as well as education about pesticides. 
My own gardens are 85% native plants that attract these important pollinators.

In her talk, "Asters & goldenrods: Autumn's Pollinator Banquet," Heather Holm described some of the most interesting traits of the Bumblebee (Bombus), which is a solitary bee. For instance, the first Bumblebees you see in the spring are the queens. They are large, and vigorously foraging on the earliest blooming flowers and trees as they prepare to make a nest.

Male Carpenter Bees on Zinnia

Once the queen has formed her underground nest, she lays an egg in each cavity and stays underground from then on. The queen is able to decide which sex her offspring will be, and the first batch of small Bumblebees that you'll see are all females. They are the workers. They forage and carry pollen and nectar back to the nest for the queen to use for the next batch of eggs.

When that group hatches, they are all males. Once they leave the nest, they never return. So when you
see a Bumblebee resting on a flower early in the cool morning or in the evening, it is a male.

Bumblebee buzz-pollinating wild rose

Only female Bumblebees can sting; even though the males might seem aggressive, they are harmless.
Bumblebees are the only pollinators that can "buzz pollinate," which means they can access the pollen from flowers that have no anthers by crawling into the throat of the flower, then vibrating to shake the pollen onto their bodies.

Hummingbirds love Obedient Plant

Holm's talk also included the elements responsible for the decline in our pollinators: climate change, insecticides, other pesticides, nest site disturbance, flowerless landscapes, competition from introduced non-native bees, fragmented habitat, and pest and pathogen transmission. Some of these things we cannot change as individual gardeners, but we can certainly modify our own pollinator habitats. Use natives, plant with seasons in mind, and be chemical free in the garden. You can also use plants that are suitable for the various pollinators: tubular flowers to attract hummingbirds, plants with high pollen and nectar production for the bees, butterflies, moths, wasps, and flies, and colors that are known to attract each type of pollinator.

Every small thing we each do could make a big difference in the future.