From left to right: Bee on Stinking Chamomile, Fleabane, Colorado Columbine, Field of ornamental flowers
Spring is around the corner, and in some parts of the U.S. is well under way, with garden planning and planting. This is the perfect time to evaluate your gardening plans and consider planting a pollinator habitat or garden area. This can be done along with your regular vegetable garden and by attracting pollinators to your yard you’ll have an abundance of fresh produce come harvest time, along with some beautiful flowers during the summer months! Even if you only have a small yard or balcony you can put in pollinator friendly plants (and stop using pesticides as well).
Pollen provides most of the nutrients required for bee development and for honey bees nectar from flowers contains carbohydrates and is stored as honey. Pollen is the main source of proteins, amino acids, lipids, starches, and many other vital building blocks and impact bee health immensely. Pollen intake can impact immunity, tolerance to pathogens, and metabolism of bees, so the nutritional quality of pollen is immensely important to bee health.
Native vs. Ornamental Plants
Ornamental plants are plants grown mainly for decoration and display of their flowers. These are usually non-native plants and while they can provide food for bees they pose risks to native plant diversity and abundance, impacting native bees that rely on certain species of native plants for pollen. While pollen from ornamental plants have the same nutritional quality as native plants for bees the biggest risk they pose is pushing out native plant species and thus impacting native bee species. Honeybees are able to use ornamental plants for pollen many native bees are specialists and rely on certain native plant species for pollen.
Native plants are, as the name suggests,
native to an area and are often considered weeds. However they provide important pollination resources for native bees and can be used by honeybees as well. Little research has been done on native bees and the role that native plant pollen nutrition compares to ornamental plant pollen. However, native plants provide important ecosystem services to their native environments and the native bees that have evolved to harvest pollen from certain species of native plants. Adult native bees prefer native flowers over non-native flowers and native bee life cycles are often synched with the flowering of native plants during their foraging season. While honeybees can form huge colonies, most native bees are solitary and depend on a few eggs and larvae in nests. Native bees also do not produce honey and their young eat pollen from flowers. Native plants are adapted to the soil and climate of their region and are usually the best source of nectar and pollen for bees (1)
Bees are a primary pollinator of plants and with land-use change and loss of floral resources wild bee abundance and richness is in decline. Native bees are an important part of ecosystems and unlike honeybees many are not generalists and require specific flowers in order to thrive. Because native bees have evolved to pollinate specific plants, they are better at pollinating those plants than honeybees. Native bees increase fruit production significantly for many plants, including watermelons (2), apples (3), and tomatoes (4) to name just a few. So what flowers should you plant to help our bees?
To find a list of native plants that you can include in you garden visit Colorado Native Plant Societies guide to native plants for gardens, the Pollinator Partnership guide to selecting plants for pollinators and the Xerxes Society Southern Plains Region Pollinator Plant guide.
Citations
1. Xerxes Society (2017). Pollinatoe Plants: Southern Plains Region. Xerxes Society. https://www.xerces.org/sites/default/files/2018-05/17-054_03_XercesSoc_PollinatorPlants_Southern-Plains-Region_web-3page.pdf
2.Winfree, R., Williams, N. M., Dushoff, J., & Kremen, C. (2007). Native bees provide insurance against ongoing honey bee losses. Ecology Letters, 10(11), 1105-1113. doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2007.01110.x
3.Martins, K. T., Gonzalez, A., & Lechowicz, M. J. (2015). Pollination services are mediated by bee functional diversity and landscape context. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 200, 12-20. doi:10.1016/j.agee.2014.10.018
4.Greenleaf, S. S., & Kremen, C. (2006). Wild bee species increase tomato production and respond differently to surrounding land use in northern california. Biological Conservation, 133(1), 81-87. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2006.05.025
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