If you like pollinators...

[ducks4you]

... you will WANT to be involved in this!
The University of Illinois Extension office (Bloomington, IL) is coordinating a project to plant flowers, count pollinators and add to the study of which common garden flowers are the most helpful to our pollinators.
https://web.extension.illinois.edu/cfiv/pollinators/

 

[so lucky]

Are you going to participate, ducks? That does sound cool and worthwhile.
Here at home, I'm really getting concerned about the honeybee population. I have yet to see a single bee this year, even though I have lots of larkspur and bachelor buttons blooming in the garden, plus a yard full of white clover. I have seen maybe 4 bumble bees, two of them dead. No spraying or planting in the field behind us, so that worry is moot.

 

[flowerbug]

i've seen bees around, the bee keeper did put out his hives the past few days. we have honeysuckle bushes blooming and i'm pretty sure they'll get into that.

i've seen a few bumblebees. i'm hoping once the cucumbers and squash get flowering we'll see more.

 

[thistlebloom]

There's lots of bumblebee activity here, but no honeybees. Which could just mean no one nearby has hives. My next door neighbor lost his two hives to wasps last year. He won't start again until next season.

 

[so lucky]

I did finally see one honey bee on some clover yesterday.

 

[ducks4you]

Are you going to participate, ducks? That does sound cool and worthwhile.
Here at home, I'm really getting concerned about the honeybee population. I have yet to see a single bee this year, even though I have lots of larkspur and bachelor buttons blooming in the garden, plus a yard full of white clover. I have seen maybe 4 bumble bees, two of them dead. No spraying or planting in the field behind us, so that worry is moot.

Gosh, don't know if I have time, but I wanted to share. EVERYBODY wants to help the pollinators and the participation part is not only useful but generous to let others, NOT just professional horticulturists, be involved in their study. How about you?

 

[flowerbug]

Gosh, don't know if I have time, but I wanted to share. EVERYBODY wants to help the pollinators and the participation part is not only useful but generous to let others, NOT just professional horticulturists, be involved in their study. How about you?

we grow a lot of various flowers here. enough that the beekeeper who drops a lot of hives has kept bringing them back. we keep a pretty good diversity of flowers going all season.

if you want an annual that will flower most of the later part of summer that a lot of bees seem to like that is easy to grow give cosmos a try (the yellow, orange and reddish type). i always see plenty of bees on them.

i'm putting a patch in this year because i need to refresh my seed supply. they usually give off tons of seeds. long sharp seeds so don't squeeze your hand too tight when picking them...

one of my first projects in gardening when i got back to it after some years from wandering was to select from this blend to see if i could influence flower color and diversity. as something to do for fun.

alas, i don't have a good copy of most of the pictures any more that i can find but the wayback machine keeps some of them:

https://web.archive.org/web/20050216121032/http://www.anthive.com/flowers/thumbs/thumbs.html

 

[AMKuska]

I'm surprised sage isn't on the list. There's always tons of bees crawling all over the sage and lavender in my garden. I'll try and help out and publish something on this in my environmentalism blog. We definitely need bees.

 

[AMKuska]

I finished the article I wrote for it. I hope it helps. Here's a link if you want to see: http://www.rinexii.com/2019/06/17/pocket-gardens-for-bees-and-butterflies/

 

[ducks4you]

@AMKuska , Hooray!!!
I thought maybe somebody would like to participate. They usually don't think we hobby gardeners are worth it.