Pollinator Week by Tina Ligon

It is National Pollinator week and I just got this great shot of a honey bee on an oriental poppy on Sunday. Notice the load of black pollen collected on the bee's pollen basket already. They are fun to watch anytime but on such a big flower you can really watch how they go about collecting the pollen.

Pollinators are a big part of our plant ecosystem and we need to do our part in providing a suitable habitat for them. Here is a link to a Planttalk 1404 - Bees & pollination, http://www.ext.colostate.edu/ptlk/1404.html

There is also a great website Pollinator Partnership, http://www.pollinator.org/index.html
There is a downloadable guide, Selecting Plants for Pollinators, that can be customized by your area. So here is the link for the guide which includes our mounatin area, http://pollinator.org/PDFs/Guides/SRockyMtStepperx3FINAL.pdf