Celebrate Pollinators During Pollinator Week

When I heard that this was National Pollinator Week (June 15-21, 2015) I decided to make a collage from some of my pollinator images to celebrate their beauty and hard work. It quickly became clear that I would have to severely limit what I included in the collage. I have quite a few images of different bees, butterflies and other insects seen busily gathering nectar and thereby pollinating a wide variety of flowers. I decided to limit this collage to a bird and some of the bees.

You can click on the image to see a larger view. I was going to do some research and identify the pollinators that I included in the collage. After finding out that there are 9 different bumblebees in Texas and a couple of insects that mimic them and because I included two pollinators that look to me somewhat like bees but I suppose they could be mimics too, I decided that IDing each one was beyond the scope of this post. I can tell you that the bottom right photo is of a European honey bee pollinating my blackberry flowers and the pollinator above that is a hummingbird. I think the upper left image is of a carpenter bee and the lower left is one of the 9 species of bumblebees that live in TX. If any of you know if that is correct or what those other two pollinators are, please let us know in the comments to this post.

National Pollinator Week was put into place by the U.S. Senate in 2007. They directed the Secretary of Agriculture to designate a week in June of each year as National Pollinator Week. Pollinators are vital to the production of crops and propagation of most plants. It is important that we strive to make a healthy ecosystem to support the pollinators.

If you want to attract pollinators to your yard, their needs are the same as for any other wildlife you want to attract. Provide shelter, water and food sources. To find out more about the specific needs of pollinators and to find out if there are any fun events planned for this week in your area, check out pollinator.org .