The Pollinators Are Arriving

 
 My landscape continues to evolve with each passing day. The patch of grass in my front yard that I framed in October is now nearly half planted and the wetland in my backyard has mature flowering plants where once it was mostly a collection of sticks. With this has come a wide range of pollinators where once I had virtually none. The transformation to date has been nothing less than spectacular.While the woody components of my new landscape will take years to fully reach their potential, a well-designed pollinator garden can do its job in a very short time.
Over the past several weeks, I have noticed a significant increase in both the number of pollinators and the number of species using my landscape. When I first moved in, late October 2018, it was a virtual wasteland here. During that first month, I witnessed only a solitary blueberry bee and it nectared each day on a wall of non-native morning glories that I felt compelled to let live. As my new key lime began to bloom, I hand-pollinated it as there were no honeybees to do that for me. 
Throughout these past months, I've been adding host plants for the butterflies I most wish to provide for here and a wide variety of wildflowers for pollinating insects of all kinds. As I watch my plants, I've recorded well over half a dozen new bees to my yard. Honeybees are abundant. I do not know where their hive is, and it could be more than a mile from here, but they have discovered that there is now a steady source of nectar for them. I've had several species of green metallic and sweat bees here and they now visit daily and I've noticed a microscopic bee, identity unknown, that seems to prefer the open tubular flowers of my smooth beardtongue (Penstemon laevigata). It is a flower that I do not see other bees using and I have not witnessed this bee on other flowers. 
The diversity of butterflies that have crossed my landscape recently grows exponentially with each passing week. I've always had a few gulf fritillaries as the somewhat weedy winged maypop (Passiflora suberosa) has been here from the start. As my milkweeds have started to mature, I've had a regular procession of monarch butterflies and their caterpillars. White peacocks, cloudless sulfurs, and giant swallowtails have flown by, but I have yet to find their caterpillars on the host plants I've added for them. Recently, I have also noticed zebra longwings up along my back fence where some winged maypop is growing and yesterday I saw my first red admiral and checkered white. Someday, all of these and more will hopefully choose to stay. 
As I watch my pollinators, it is obvious that each has its preferred plants. There is no single universal flower that draws them all in.  I have left small patches of Spanish needle (Bidens alba) in the extreme corners of my yard, but I'm slowly reducing them now that many of my wildflowers are coming into their own. Spanish needles is a wonderful nectar source, but it doesn't play well with others in a mixed meadow setting and I get tired of picking the seeds out of my clothing every time I brush up against it. My honeybees seem to prefer this plant and it gets some attention from the green metallic bees as well, but the small sweat bees swarm over the two species of Coreopsis that's been blooming in the front and lately, with the arrival of the shiny coneflowers (Rudbeckia nitida), they can't seem to find enough space on the flower heads to fit them all. 
What I continue to lack, and the bee I am most concerned with, are bumble bees. For the past several years in my former landscape, they were a rare visitor. Here in my new one, they have been completely absent though I have several flowering plants that rely on them heavily for their pollination.  I feel that while most of our collective attention has been focused on honeybee collapse, the bumble bees have made a quiet, but serious exit. Of course, they need habitat - not simply flowers.
I'll be monitoring for pollinators in the months and years ahead and I'll continue to post about my progress here.




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