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Celebrating Colorado Pollinator Month
Applewood Seed Company’s trial gardens showcase a diverse array of pollinators
A Hunt’s bumblebee collects pollen from a Perennial Lupine.
As spring turns into summer in the Colorado Rockies, the native pollinators are hard at work collecting pollen and nectar from wildflowers. We at Applewood Seed Company are continuously improving our wildflower varieties to benefit our local Colorado pollinators and other pollinator species across the U.S.
A small carpenter bee sits on Eastern Beebalm.
Our various pollinator seed mixtures provide diverse nutrients for bees, butterflies, birds, moths, and other beneficial insects throughout the year. Highlighting these keystone species is at the heart of Applewood Seed’s vision, and no better place to study the various Colorado pollinators than our own trial gardens located in Arvada, CO.
Native bees, wasps, and other pollinators can be seen buzzing through the penstemons, cinquefoils and asters in our trial gardens.
An Andrena sp. of mining bee on a bigflower cinquefoil.
Pictured top left is Bombus huntii, or Hunt’s Bumble Bee happily buzzing away around perennial lupine. You can see that she has collected the orange pollen into her corbiculae or “pollen baskets” on her hind legs. To the right, a tiny carpenter bee (Ceratina spp.) sips nectar from Monarda bradburiana, or Eastern Beebalm.
Down on the bottom left a mining bee investigates a bigflower cinquefoil Potentilla fissa; these native Andrenids often get mistaken for honey bees. Their smaller size, dark wings, and facial fovae (think of them as fluffy eyebrows on the inner margins of their eyes) are just some characteristics that help distinguish them from Apis mellifera, the European Honey Bee.
Identifying bees and other pollinators can be tricky; you can see our Colorado Bee guide below to follow along as bees visit your gardens, nurseries, and reclamation areas. To celebrate Colorado Pollinator Month, consider planting our native or pollinator-oriented mixes such as those recommended below.
Urban Gardens Can Provide Great Habitat for Pollinators
According to a recent article in Bee Culture Magazine entitled, “Urban Gardens and Allotments Provide Especially Good Habitat for Pollinator Communities”, by Mike Gaworecki, urban areas can play an important role in conserving our pollinators. Traditionally, cities have been thought to have much lower biodiversity compared to rural areas, but new studies find that this […]
National Pollinator Garden Network Reaches Goal Of One Million Registered Pollinator Gardens
The Million Pollinator Garden Challenge (MPGC) was launched in 2015 by the National Pollinator Garden Network. The organizations behind the network include the National Wildlife Federation, Pollinator Partnership, American Public Gardens Association, National Gardening Bureau, American-Hort, and the American Seed Trade Association. Their collective efforts helped to bring awareness to the important role that pollinators […]
Take a Look at Our New Products for 2019
We are introducing three new garden flowers, one native wildflower, and one new herb this year. Some of our new flowers will be additions to our pollinator, regional and special-use seed mixtures. In addition, we are introducing a brand new pollinator mixture: The Bumblebee Buffet Mixture. The first of our new garden flowers is Dwarf […]