Making your home pollinator-friendly is easy and rewarding. Most of North America’s native bee species only forage over a distance of a few hundred yards, so with a little planning, your yard can provide a safe space for bees and other pollinators to thrive. All you need to give them are flowering plants throughout the growing season, undisturbed places to nest, and protection from pesticides. The Protecting Pollinators at Home guide will help you with the last item, managing yard pests in a pollinator-friendly way. Download here: Protecting Pollinators at Home

We’re proud to be a BeeCityUSA affiliate during Pollinator Week! Let’s celebrate the hard-working insects that bring so much to our world! With more than 3,600 species, bees are the most important group of pollinators in the US. Without bumble bees, sweat bees, mason bees, mining bees, metallic green bees, squash bees, sunflower bees, and so many more, gardens would be less productive and landscapes less colorful.

This year, let’s get rid of insecticides from our gardens. 25% of total insecticide use in the US is in gardens! Reasons to not use insecticides:

• They rarely solve the problem of why you have a pest. Find out why the pest is there and adjust to deal with the cause.

• They kill bees, too. A healthy garden shows signs of life – chewed leaves, blemished plants, nests in the ground.

• They don’t stay where you applied them. What you put on your garden washes away. Urban creeks can be more polluted than agricultural areas.

Stop by Village Hall to pick up your free packet of
FEED THE BEES Wildflower Mix!

#BeeCityUSA #ProtectBees #PollinatorWeek #NoSpray

source: BeeCityUSA