National Pollinator Week
National Pollinator Week is an annual event celebrated all over the world in the last full week in June, from June 20 to June 26 this year. The event was started in support of pollinator health because there is a global decline in pollinators. #PollinatorWeek.
What are pollinators?
Pollinators are insects and small animals like birds, butterflies, and bees that pollinate plants and make our gardens and world greener.
Who are the pollinators in The Bahamas?
Pollinators are butterflies, wasps, bees, hummingbirds, moths, bats, beetles flies.
Some examples found in The Bahamas are listed below.
Here are additional pollinators:
| Common Name | Scientific Name |
| Horse Paper Wasp | Polistes major |
| Buckeye Butterfly | Junonia coenia |
| Mornarch Butterfly | Danaus plexippus |
| Doctorfly/ Yellowfly | Diachlorus ferrugatus |
| Skipper butterfly | Ephyriades brunnea |
| Guinea Paper Wasp | Polistes exclamans |
| Bahama Paperwasp | Polistes bahamensis |
| Oleander Caterpillar Moth | Empyreuma pugione |
| Orchid Bee | Euglossa sp |
| Gulf Fritilary Butterfly | Agraulis vanillae |
| Clear winged moth | Eunomia latenigra |
| European honeybee | Apis mullifera |
| Cuckoo wasp | Chrysididae sp |
| Faithful Beauty Moth | Composia fidelissima |
| Green Darner Dragonfly | Anax junius |
When does pollination occur?
Pollination takes place in the spring and summer, when flowers are in flower and pollinators are active.
Why should we care?
Of the 1,400 crop plants grown around the world, i.e., those that produce all of our food and plant-based industrial products, almost 80% require pollination by animals.
Pollinators are key to reproduction of wild plants in our fragmented global landscape. Without them, existing populations of plants would decline, even if soil, air, nutrients, and other life-sustaining elements were available.
Other Facts
- Bees tend to prefer flowers that they can walk on to sip nectar.
- Butterflies and moths need a place to land on the flowers that they visit, so they prefer broad, flat-faced flowers.
- The chocolate midge is the only pollinator that pollinates the cacao plant. (source) Tiny insects (smaller than the size of pinheads) called chocolate midges are believed to be the only creatures that can fit into the intricate cacao flowers and pollinate them. Wild cacao flowers have over 75 distinct aroma ingredients, drawing in the midges. Cultivated cacao flowers (those found in plantations) only have a few aroma ingredients, making them less appealing to the tiny pollinators.
What is BRON’s role as a Development Consultant?
We encourage our clients to not only incorporate as much vegetation in the landscaping design as possible but to consider using native vegetation. This will help protect the native pollinator population.
For more information: National Pollinator Week – June 19-25, 2023 | Pollinator Week | Pollinator.org
