Cindy King spoke at our January meeting about planting for pollinators. Native bees experienced a 43% to 44% loss. Some of that may be due to lack of food and habitat. Cindy gave some general recommendations and things to think about such as bloom period, number of plants, color of flower, and hybrid versus native types before going over the qualities of a number of different plants. She gave recommendations of plants focused more on native pollinators and not necessarily hon

Mike Embrey spoke at our November meeting about pollen and its uses. Bees collect pollen from flowers and in the process transfer pollen from plant to plant, pollinating the plants. While foraging, bees will store pollen on their legs in pollen pellets held together with nectar or saliva/lactic acid. Bees can forage an area up to 6,000 acres (about a 2 mile radius) and therefore the pollen they collect is a mixture from various plants of the same species. Bees will collect di