Bee’s Knees: It’s Pollinator Week!

The Eastlake Community Council is hosting an I-5 Colonnade Open Space clean-up event this Wednesday, June 20, from 9 to noon, and it is a good way to celebrate National Pollinator Week, which is June 18-24 this year. Another good way is to plant native plants. “Research suggests native plants are four time more attractive to native bees than exotic flowers,” says the Xerces Society, and they have a handy list of NW natives that do just that – attract bees.

If you’d like to go further but are not quite ready to become an apiarist, you can create bee habitat. It requires food (those native plants), fresh water source, and nesting places. The Green Queen has the how to’s in her blog post Make your garden bee-friendly.

Begun eleven years ago by a unanimous vote of the U.S. Senate, National Pollinator Week has “grown into an international celebration of the valuable ecosystem services provided by bees, birds, butterflies, bats and beetles,” according to the Pollinator Partnership, the organization announcing the week.

Seattle was officially recognized as the eighth bee city in the country in 2015 by Bee City USA. There are now 70 bee cities, and they provide annual reports. “These reports are bursting with inspiring stories,” says Bee City USA, “of communities planting pesticide-free habitat rich in diversity of locally native plants, discussing their community’s pest management policies with pollinators in mind, and hosting events for young and old to create awe for and greater understanding of the plant-pollinator collaboration that makes our planet bloom and fruit.”

Seattle has a few nationally recognized events happening, too, organized by the nonprofit The Common Acre:

Pollinator Field Day, June 18 @ Beacon Hill Food Forest

Save the Pollinators Symposium, June 19 @ Rainier Arts Center

Meet the Bees, June 21 @ Centro de la Raza

Help Build Pollinator Habitat, June 24 @ Duwamish River Valley

Pollinator Poster 2018 available at pollinator.org/pollinator-week.

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Featured sketch by Karen Berry