On May 20 we celebrate World Bee Day. Bees, like other pollinators, play a key role in making life possible on our planet.
It is known that 75 percent of the world's crops depend on pollinators. Without them, most of the fruits, flowers, and seeds we know would not exist. The ecosystem service provided by pollination is crucial and immeasurable. However, pollinators are in danger globally due to degenerative agriculture and land management practices. Industrial agriculture that causes loss of habitats due to deforestation, monocultures that threaten biodiversity, the use of pesticides and the resulting climate crisis are the main factors threatening their survival.
An increasingly common phenomenon is hive collapse syndrome, which affects both honey and wild bees, but is even more noticeable in the case of the former. For beekeepers, the evidence of the collapse is visible when opening the beehive box: there is less and less population and an increasing number of them are uninhabited, as if bees had fled. It is also possible to see worker bees return to the entrance of the hive lost and disoriented, walking in circles, and in some cases not recognizing their own hive.
For the past decade pollinator populations have really struggled. It’s been shown that sometimes chemicals in fertilizers that are used, or non-native plants that typically line a city street or exist in a yard aren’t pollinator friendly. Pollinators require diverse plant life, undisturbed sites to find shelter, bright colored flowers, and a reduction in artificial lights that can disturb natural patterns. Many are now at risk for extinction.
The best way to save our local ecosystems is by planting native seeds! Native plants help restore natural habitat that has been diminished and destroyed by a multitude of practices. Our bio-diversity thrives on the specific micro-climates and ecosystems that have been adapted to our region over thousands of years. In helping restore animals and plants, it’s imperative to plant as many native species as possible when converting spaces back into native habitat. In doing so, we provide the kinds of flora that pollinators and other wildlife thrive on.
We here in the Cascadia bioregion sit on the forefront of the major crises and issues facing our world. But luckily there is a lot we can be doing about that. We think these pollinator packs are a great, simple, and effective way to make a little difference, and an easy and sustainable way to cultivate healthy native ecosystems, pollinators and plants. By growing pollinator friendly, native plants, avoiding pesticides, providing nesting sites, and encouraging others to join in, we can restore habitat for pollinators and push back against the waves of decline that threaten pollinator populations.
There are more and more traces of pesticides, in particular neonicotinoids, in pollen and in the hives themselves, which affect their central nervous system, causing disorientation, and weakens their immune system.
Read the full article at: https://regenerationinternational.org/2021/05/06/world-bee-day-no-pollination-no-life/
Events on pollinators
5/12 - Attract Pollinators to the Garden - Butterflies, Bees and Hummingbirds
5/12 - La apicultura en el mes del alma consciente
5/12 - Restoring the Little Things that Run the World, by Doug Tallamy
5/20 - Gardening for Bumblebees
5/29 - Garden Workshops: Know Your Pollinators
6/17 - Causes of bees decline … and what we can do to help them
Want to Support Pollinators here in Cascadia? Grab a Cascadia Pollinator Seed Bomb Kit!
Enclosed in each pack is a bundle of native wildflower seeds, a little booklet and some clay powder if you’d like to make little seed bombs.
These little packs of native wildflower seeds are meant to support local plants and pollinators! All of which are a crucial component of ecosystems at large. In the Cascadia Bioregion we have native pollinators like hummingbirds, bees, butterflies, moths, flies, wasps, and beetles. Cities can be pollinator deserts because of lawns and manicured city agriculture.
If you’d like to pick up a bundle, we have three sizes available, “personal use”, “bomb your yard” and “bomb your neighborhood”.
Sprinkle them in your yard, get them out into the world, or create little seed bombs that can be tossed around where you live to help restore native habitat, microbes, pollinators, butterflies, birds and animals.
