Bring Back the Bees and Butterflies: Plant a Pollinator Garden
An Article by Barbara Adner, Past Director and Member at Large of MEC – Published August 2017
I first became aware of the importance of bees when our son, Adam, agreed to house two beehives for a beekeeper. He lives behind a flower nursery where the bees had an abundant choice of flower pollen.
Very interesting, I thought. It got even more interesting when one day I opened the trash can and found bees in it. There were hoards of them and they were on the move over and under and inside the trash bags. It happened while Adam, the bee lover, was visiting, and he found a beekeeper who would relocate the bees for $150. My choices were to spend $150 and have the bees taken to another location, leave the lid open and hope they would fly away (they did, but returned) or leave them to their fate in the never-never land where trash is dumped. I would like to say I did the former but, truth be told, I did the latter and have worried about those bees ever since.
Much has been written about the loss of bees to pollinate plants. Butterflies, birds, bats, flies, and moths are also pollinators. As their habitats are destroyed by converting wild lands to domestic use, and as the pesticides poison the pollinators, the human food chain is diminished. Some of our agriculture is now pollinated through the aid of beekeepers who transport their beehives from crop to crop, since there are no longer enough bees and other creatures to pollinate the plants.