The Xerces Society’s Pollinator Conservation Resource Center is now on-line!

It has a clickable map of North America; you can find all sorts of resources indexed there.  For example, there is a Guide to Upper Midwest plants for Native Bees! Enjoy the downloading.

I could not resist this photo of an adorable little bee, even if it isn’t a North American bee; the colors were so lovely! Thanks to AussieGal for sharing!

Just in time for the holidays–Xerces has a new native bee calendar!

“The Xerces Society and the Great Sunflower Project are happy to offer the 2010 Native Bee Calendar, which was created by Celeste Ets-Hokin. With magnificent close-up photos by Rollin Coville, this calendar takes you on a tour of twelve commonly encountered types of native bees. Each month features a full-page pin-up of a different bee genus, accompanied by a brief summary of its preferred plants, nesting needs, notes on how to identify it, and of course, a complete day-by-day calendar for each month.

All orders must be received online by Monday, November 30, 2009. Calendars will be shipped to arrive by the holidays.

Price: $14.00 (including shipping).

Xerces Society

Sales of this calendar will directly benefit the conservation work of both organizations.”

What are you waiting for?

Ed alerted me to this–it’s wonderful!  And where the heck have I been that I wasn’t in on this myself??  From their Mission Statement:

“Pestival is a mobile arts festival examining insect-human interactivity in bioscience, through paradigms of contemporary art, cinema, music and comedy as well as direct scientific demonstration and educational projects.

Pestival will bring together eminent international artists and scientists and local and global communities to collaborate on cutting-edge interdisciplinary art projects, placing the natural world under the microscope in order to further public understanding of our place within the biosphere.”

This SOOO needs to happen in the US.  The termite pavilion looks simply lovely. And check out the Bee Cab:

There is, BTW, a working hive in that cab!

More Pestival Coverage:

• Flickr Pestival Pool
• Guardian Photos and news coverage

I say next year, we set up a hive of insect bloggers as an exhibit. Who’s in?

Homebuggarden commented earlier this week:

“Has anyone come across a good source of information on providing nest support for alternative pollinators such as bumblebees, digger bees, and the like?”

Indeed, I have!  Xerces has an excellent PDF download, Nests for Native Bees.  There are also additional detailed instructions in their publication Farming for Bees (starting on page 25).

There is Michigan specific advice in a PDF here (and any day now I’ll get around to reviewing the  awesome paper those authors published in Ecology Frontiers….)  There is also a plant list for Michigan in this PDF publication.

You can find a list of all the excellent Xerces Society publications online here, downloadable free as PDFs!

In case you missed it, here’s a link to the NPR interview with Steve Buchmann, the international coordinator of the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign.  You might remember Buchmann as one of the authors of the excellent book Forgotten Pollinators.

From the NPR blog:

“Mother Nature has lots of other pollinators — typically five to ten types — that visit a single plant.

Still, bumblebees and bats could use tending, too, he says. To improve their lives, try to plant local wildflowers and heirloom fruits and veggies. Native plants suited to the local climate and soil are likelier to flourish and feed bees. Steer clear of the ornately ruffled sophisticates that have spent generations in a hothouse.

Breeding a plant for our taste often inadvertently breeds out the goodies–the sweet nectar–that pollinators seek.”

I believe you may remember an earlier rant here about “pollenless” varieties of plants I was finding in my seed catalogs

The Pollinator Partnership has an interactive zipcode map to suggest plants that will please your local native pollinators.  You’ll get a full collor multi-page PDF document to download explaining what kinds of plants different pollinators like, and some plant suggestions.  The Xerces Society also has some nice lists of plants for pollinators you can download, too!

Check out these Pollination Reources for teachers at the NBII! (National Biological Information Infrastructure)  They currently have 78 lessons related to pollination and pollinators listed.

They also have some fun resources on pollination and food, like this one: Chocolate’s Sweet Little Secret (PDF)

“The cacao flower, while only about the diameter of a nickel, is complex in design and behavior, necessitating a special kind of animal to pollinate it.  Recent studies in cacao plantations indicate that midges, tiny flies that inhabit the damp, shady rain forest, are the only animals that can work their way through the complex cacao flower and pollinate it.  A member of the same insect family as the “no-see-um” flies that plague us  with their bites, this millimeter-long fly is from the family Ceratopogonidae and the genus Forcipomyia–a  very tiny animal with a very long name.  These cacao-pollinating midges are endemic not to plantations, but  to the tropical rain forest itself.”

Sadly, the way in which we grow cacao actually contributes to low pollination rates, since the midges aren’t very happy away from the rain forest.

Happy surfing!

It’s National Pollinator Week, and here’s a neat site for you–a complete list, continuously updated, of crops of importance to humans that insects pollinate.  Pollinating animals contribute to at least one out of every three bites we eat.

Some of the fruits and vegetables on this list are obviously recognizable.  There are also crops that produce a product that we use, like Neem or cotton.  And, of premier importance to scientists everywhere: COFFEE and CHOCOLATE!

Why not plan a menu that features only foods and recipes created with the help of pollinating animals?  NAPPC has some suggestions that will highlight all that pollinators do for us:

Baked Pita Chips with Artichoke Dip

• Artichoke – bee
• Lemon Juice – bee
• Onions – bee and fly

Beef Brochette with Green Pepper & Tomatoes

• Beef – beef cattle are fed bee pollinated alfalfa
• Tomatoes – bee
• Pepper – bee and fly

Vanilla Ice cream with fruit/ chocolate sauce

• Vanilla – bee
• Raspberries – bee
• Strawberries – bee
• Cacao – A fly. This tiny animal brings you chocolate.
• Peppermint – fly and bee

And a little after dinner drink…..Tequila Sunrise

• Tequila -bat
• Orange juice – bee
• Cherry – bee

Ok, well, I guess you could have a cup of coffee, as an alternative.

Celebrate National Pollinator Week, June 22-28, 2009!

There is a nifty collection of online resources–including document templates, fact sheets, and more–online here!

There are even stickers you can print on your printer. Cool!

OMGOMGWTF.

This is, of course, a viral video promoted by Haagen-Dazs, but I like it none the less. No one tell them that they’re not supposed to have stingers if they’re dudes, K? (or that male bees don’t dance.)

There is also a disco version.

I got an email recently from the Xerces Society about some senatorial action:

“Please contact your Senators and ask them to sign on to a letter by Senator Boxer in support of vital research on agricultural pollinators. …The deadline for Senators to sign on to this letter is Wednesday, May 6. Providing funding for research into the causes and remedies of honey bee and native bee declines is a critical step in pollinator conservation….

Senator Boxer has written a letter requesting that the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee allocate $20 million in Fiscal Year 2010 for pollinator research projects as authorized in the 2008 Farm Bill….to promote the health of honey bees and native pollinators through habitat conservation and best management practices.”

There is some additional coverage of Boxer’s actions here; including blurbs from May Berenbaum!

You can download a free PDF of “Using Farm Bill Programs for Pollinator Conservation” at the Xerces site; it’s a joint USDA-NRCS-Xerces publication.  It discusses how existing farm programs (Conservation reserve, etc) can be used to promote native bee populations.

There’s also a PDF on building next boxes for native bees.  And, make sure you check out Anna’s new posts on her spring bees!  Pretty pictures! 

[Anna may or may not endorse the contents of this post; but had to link to Shiny! ]