Native Bees and Pollinators
Types of Pollinators
There are over 4,000 species of pollinators occupy both the U.S. and Canada.
Many pollinators consist of butterflies, flies, bats, moths, and even small terrestrial mammal species. More commonly known pollinators (and our focus) are bees. There are to an extent, few colony bees (bees that are made up of a queen bee, worker bees, and drones) AKA your common honeybee. Furthermore, Native bees take up a huge part of the population. Utah is home to about 900 different species of Native bees of which most are solitary. Most solitary bees nest in the ground or in current cavities.
Why they are important
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80%-90% of flowering plants, counting 75% of fruits, nuts, and vegetables developed in the U.S are pollinated by bees
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Roughly $20B of agriculture products are made possible by North American Bees.
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It is estimated to be $3B per year that Native Bees serve the U.S.
(These stats are originated from pollinator services. Other unsaid services is the food supply bees give to other animals in the food chain, as well as aid the evolution of plant speciation of crossed pollinating plants.)
“Native bee Sitting on Wormwood plant” by Jean and Fred licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Habitat for pollinators
Bees need three essential things for a habitat. First, a nesting habitat for when they are ready to make a nest and lay eggs. Second, a foraging habitat to fuel their everyday activities, and third, they need shelter areas and also water. When it comes to foraging habitat, bees will need flowering/nectar plants available throughout the growing season in the early spring-late fall. While other important pollinators like butterflies need nectar plants at a very specific time in their life cycle when the adults are flying. If these resources are not available when they need them they may not be able to mate and lay eggs for the next generation. Mainly the butterflies will only lay eggs on specific plants, for instance like Milkweed.
Plants that attract pollinators
A good expert of ours said “You will find that a university professor’s favorite answer to anything is ‘it depends’.” The best plants to attract pollinators all rely on the type of pollinator you desire to attract. Different species of plants will work the best with different pollinators. Many species of bees and butterflies will favor plants that are a part of the mint family (peppermint, basil, spearmint, catmint). Though, if one wants to find the best attracting plant, that would be the sunflower family. The technical term being Asteraceae. Some of which, the species will flower in the Spring, Summer and Fall. With both bees and other pollinating insects they have co-evolved. Such so, to increase pollinating efficiency. Sunflowers will put all its flowers into a close-packed head in order for less exertion for bees going to and fro between each flower. Both bees and the plants are benefited. Because of this, sunflowers are more likely to be visited.
"Native Bee" by Ann licensed under CC BY 1.0
"Native Bee" by Vijay Somalinga licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0
How much they pollinate
Honeybees and bumblebees are generalists. These pollinators will pollinate regardless if a plant is agricultural or not. Though, like you and us, variety in food is needed. For example, having only sunflowers in the world because of their efficiency would be bad.
However, other bees and butterflies can be picky with what they want to visit. For example the squash bee will mostly only eat squash, pollen and nectar. They also tend to live in squash flowers. So, it’s better to have a wider variety of plants in order to have a variety of pollinators.
Additional Information
Much of our agricultural crop products are grasses (oats, rice, corn, wheat, sorghum). Which are wind pollinated and aren’t reliant on bees or butterflies in order to reproduce. Though, fruit, nuts and vegetables, are more reliant on the aid of pollinators.
