What are pollinators? If you guessed bees, you are correct! But what are they by definition? They are animals who carry pollen from flower to flower and therefore enable the plants to produce seeds and fruits. They are an important part of the plant’s lifecycle. Now that we know the definition, we can also recognize bats, butterflies, beetles and birds as pollinators. There are actually 200, 000 species of pollinators. Honeybees are just one of them.

Because pollinators allow some plats to reproduce, and because plants are at the very beginning of every food chain, they are pretty important. Three fourths of the worlds flowering plants actually depend on pollinators. Nearly one of every three bites of food we take only came to be because of pollinators.

But like everything else pollinators also face problems. They are troubled by habitat loss, pesticide exposure, parasites, climate change, pathogens (an organism that causes disease) and competition with non-native species. For example, honeybees, which are not native to north America, support 22,000 jobs in the US.

It is important that we don’t think only about the honeybees. Native pollinators might be even more important than honeybees, because they are often ignored.

We can help pollinators by planting native plants (to which the pollinators have adopted). This will provide them with pollen and nectar. We can reduce the use of pesticides and leave areas for native grasses and shrubs to grow.

It is important to remember, that native plants can only survive with the help of native pollinators and the other way around. We should therefore try to remove invasive plants and animals. Having more honeybees is cool, but let’s not let them replace all other pollutants. To be clear, we shouldn’t suppress bees, we should help the native pollinators.

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