This week is the 4th Annual National Pollinators Week. Yep. That’s right. A whole week dedicated to the bees, butterflies, birds, insects, and other creatures that work with nature to pollinate flowers. About 75% of all flowering plants rely on insect or animal pollinators and over 200,000 different species act as pollinators. Pretty amazing, eh?
Who cares about pollinating flowers, you might ask? Well you should. 1,000 plants that you depend on for food, beverages, fibers, spices, and medicines need to be pollinated by an insect or animal. Moreover, you probably get a lot of enjoyment from watching butterflies or hummingbirds go about their business. And you might appreciate the mosquito abatement work done by bats. Butterflies, hummingbirds, and bats are all pollinators, so if you like seeing them around, you need to make sure they have the plants they need.
One of the easiest to attract pollinators are bees. Here are three simple things you can do to support the bees in your neighborhood:
- Group bee friendly plants together in as large a “clump” as your balcony will allow. A 3 foot by 3 foot spot filled to the brim with flowers bees love will be greatly appreciated.
- Don’t use pesticides. If you must, avoid broad spectrum pesticides and spray them at dusk, when bees are least active. This is a useful article about bee-safe pesticides.
- Provide nesting ground for bees. Many native bees build their nests in the soil or in tree trunks. You can help them out by leaving some exposed soil for them to dig in, and you can even buy or build bee houses.
If you follow the above advice, you might get the opportunity to see more than just honeybees on your balcony. For example, Bumble bees may visit you. They’re social, large, fuzzy, and you’ll enjoy watching their boisterous behavior. Halictid bees might also check things out, they’re solitary, small black or metallic colored bees. Or you could even get a Megachilid bee or two, they’re also solitary, and often metallic blue or black.
Of course, creatures other than bees pollinate flowers too. Here are some more ideas:
- Banish Boring Humming Bird Feeders – Check Out These Stylish Ones!
- Welcoming Wildlife Into the Balcony Garden
- DIY Modern Bird Feeder
- Have You Seen a Bee-Looking Insect That Isn’t Hairy Like a Bee?
- How to Welcome Birds and Butterflies to Your Balcony
- Great Kid Project: Grow Your Own Bird Houses
- Easy Ways to Attract Butterflies To Your Apartment
You Might Also Like:
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Well it seems I inadvertently started honoring the pollinator’s week yesterday! Potted up some flowering plants yesterday and scattered them around my food containers…. perhaps I should move them together like your suggestions say though. Plenty of pollinator and predator attractors – guara, zinnia, alyssum, lobelia, calendula…
I’ve also been thinking of altering a battery-operated fountain someone gave me for my desk to run solar and leave it out for butterflies…
What great ideas for attracting bees and other pollinators! It’s unfortunate that many people will pull out the can of Raid when they see a bee. I don’t think people realize just how important they are.
I believe another very useful pollinator is the garden ant. While garden ants can become an issue if they are in large numbers, they can be awesome pollinators as they run from one flower to the next. Small garden ants are probably the most abundant pollinator in my garden.
Of course, having ants on an apartment, or townhouse, balcony may not be the best idea.
Thanks for posting this! The pollinators need our help big time.
They have a friend in me. My yard is the Bee’s Knee’s. With all the foxglove spikes still bursting around, the echo of the Bees is strong right now. You can’t miss their call. Buzz buzz and all that.
Good info! We were just talking yesterday about bringing more flowering plants up to the balcony. We had carpenter bees in the spring and have plenty of wasps pollinating our vegetables, but we haven’t seen any honey bees yet. We have a bee house, but we haven’t seen any bees, or anything else, going in to or out of it.
I love this post” I freaked out when I first heard about the plight of our bees! But calmed down later when I read about the wonderful gardeners and friends of the bee’s across the nation who are planting Bee friendly plants and habitats to support them.
Fern, just had a chance to go through each of your links. I LOVE the idea of building a bee house. I was told that you needed to use an exact size of drill bit and drill to an exact depth, but that never rung true for me. I mean, mother nature is hardly that precise! I’m glad to have instructions from a reputable source. I’m tempted to just drill some holes in my redwood chicken coop for bees to use!
Thanks also for linking to my post about using pesticides in a way that’s friendly to bees. So often we don’t think about the implications of our actions, to the detriment of these important little critters (and ultimately to our own detriment). Thanks for bringing attention to what we can do,
Today I was inspired by the pollinators….
http://tofu-2011project.blogspot.com/2011/06/june-21-2011-buzz.html
{ 1 trackback }