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#nativebees

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#NationalPollinatorWeek

🐝 Before sunrise, a Bumble Bee sleeps on the mound of a Coneflower. That's dedication to the job. Gets up and starts working immediately.

🐛 Unbee-knownst, a caterpillar munches below. Probably a Geometer Moth caterpillar but haven't been able to get confirmation yet.

Good example of two ways insects interact with plants ecologically. Some eat them, other pollinate them.

Insects evolved in association with certain plants and have adapted to their defenses. Non-native plants can overrun natives and be inedible to the eaters.

#BiodiversityGardening #HabitatGardening #Gardening #NativePlants #Insects #NativeBees #Biodiversity #Nature @gardening

Pollinator Week is a great time to share this print, which expresses the central theme of my work about the Future of Pollination for Manufactured Ecosystems. Our food sources & ecosystems around us are dependent on pollinators (mostly bees & other insects, some birds & mammals) but insects populations have lost huge numbers and many species altogether.🧵

🦋 New species in my garden! 🥳 A Painted Lady on a Black-eyed Susan.

🐛 The caterpillars feed on thistles and I have a few.

🐛 They also feed on mallows. I need to get some mallows, actually, especially the U.S. temperate version of the popular Hibiscus.

The platter-shaped flowers of the Swamp Rose-Mallow would look great. Even better, they provide food for #NativeBees and caterpillars of two other butterflies: the Gray Hairstreak and Common Checkered-skipper.

That would be serious habitat building! 💪

#BiodiversityGardening #HabitatGardening #Gardening @gardening #NativePlant

#WorldBeeDay

🐝 Sharp-tailed Bees don't have pollen collecting hairs. Don't need them because they lay their eggs in other bee's nests. (This is called being "cleptoparasitic".)

🐝 There have to be enough of their specific prey bees to keep their population going. But insect populations have been dropping for decades, so Sharp-tailed Bees can be very hard to find.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to see one in my garden on a cloudy day.