What a difference a week makes! Rain, storms, flooding!
If nothing else the last week has shown our region, how resilient and caring we are.
I try to have a bit of a plan for what I will write about each week. Sometimes it ties in with local events and sometimes it is information about a national day or drawing attention to a specific event.
This week is National Pollinator Week and while the topic is far from many minds at the moment, enabling pollinators is actually what many of us do every day without even realising it.
In Australia we have many wild pollinator insects. Of course, most of us naturally think of European bees, but many others are often overlooked. European bees are an adaptable, generalist foragers and are happy to visit almost any flower, in most climate zones. Because they are a social species, their hives are easy to domesticate and manage.
There are also many native insects that contribute to pollination in crops and gardens. There is still a lot of research to be undertaken to identify all our pollinator insect species, understand their ecology and how they are affected by human activities.
We know that Australia has around 2,000 native bee species, all of which are important pollinators. There are a couple of thousand butterfly, wasp, fly, moth, beetle, thrips and ant species, some of which are documented pollinators.
There is still much to be learnt about the ecology of many of these insects, what flowers they pollinate and where they are found.
The Wild Pollinator Count gives you an opportunity to contribute to wild pollinator insect conservation in Australia. You can join in by watching any flowering plant for just ten minutes sometime in our count week. The good news is that you don’t need to be an insect expert, you don’t need fancy gear and it is a chance to get to know what species we have in our local area.
The link to the Pollinator website can be found here. There are some wonderful resources on this page that cover off on some of our pollinators and their habits. Even if you don’t participate in the count, next time you see an insect that you will be able to identify if it is a fly, a bee or a wasp.