pollinator 101: Bees
BEES ARE ESSENTIAL
Bees are essential to the ecosystems that support us. By pollinating plants, both cultivated and wild, they are key to plant survival, and, by extension, to the production of food, fuel, and cotton, the subsistence of animals, and the control of erosion and wind.
Everyone is familiar with honey bees (a non-native species introduced to North America from Europe in the 17th century), but these are just eight of over 20,000 types of bees in the world. (In addition to honey bees, only about 100 other bee species make honey.) There are 4,000 species of bees native to the United States, 3,000 of which live in the PNW, including mason, mining, plasterer, sweat, leafcutter, cuckoo, carpenter, and bumble bees. A few species are social (live in a hive), most are solitary, and some are in-between. 90% of bees are non-aggressive, solitary bees that nest in the ground or in plant material.
As you might expect, different bee species collect pollen and nectar in different ways, so the greater the diversity of bees, the better the pollination! As “buzz pollinators,” bumble bees can pollinate the tricky flowers of tomatoes, blueberries, and zucchini. Mason and leafcutter bees carry pollen dry and loose on their bellies, which makes pollination super easy. Wild bees also forage in light that’s too dim and temperatures that are too cold for honey bees. In short, wild solitary bees — like mason, leafcutter, and bumble bees — are better than honey bees at pollinating most cultivated crops, and they’re crucial to the pollination of wild plants, ensuring ecosystem diversity.
Bees have been shown to be pretty smart! They can learn new behaviors and use tools. Honey bees also use language (the famous “waggle dance“) to communicate foraging information to their sisters.
When you’ve got an eye out for bees, you’ll also see lots of look-alikes, like hover flies, wasps (for example, everyone’s favorite, yellowjackets, which — like it or not — are beneficial omnivorous predators native to the Pacific Northwest), and hornets.
Bees are under threat from habitat loss, climate change, pesticides, low genetic diversity, and pathogens. Colony Collapse Disorder is a major threat to honey bees, but native bees are in danger too. In fact, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, more than half of North America’s 4,000 native bee species are in decline, with 1 in 4 species at risk of extinction.
Resources
Our Resources page includes a looooong list of links to all sorts of information about bees, other pollinators, gardening for pollinators, Kirke Park partners, and much more.
Pollinator Hotel
In an effort to help support native pollinators, we built a pollinator hotel for Kirke Park!

Get to Know Your Local Bees
Below are some of the bees commonly found in the Seattle area. Most of these images were found on iNaturalist, which is an amazing source for photos and information about local bees (and other wildlife). Click an image to learn more about the bee and its photographer.




©beeingkristen






Pollinator Week
Pollinator Week, held in June, is an annual celebration in support of pollinator health organized by Pollinator Partnership. It’s a time to celebrate our many pollinators friends (including bees!), raise awareness of how much they do for us, and learn what we can do for them.
Pollinator Week 2025 will take place June 16-22, 2025.
To help celebrate this year’s Pollinator Week, we plant to host a pollinator Bioblitz (which is a biological survey that aims to document as many species as possible within a specific time and place) in Kirke Park’s Secret Garden, date TBA. Our effort will be part of a larger one, in which groups all over the world used the iNaturalist app to collect observations of pollinators during the week. Data on pollinator abundance and distribution will help scientists protect and conserve our incredibly valuable community pollinators.

Photo: @bdobb
For more information about Pollinator Week, visit the Pollinator Partnership’s website. Even when it’s not Pollinator Week, you can use iNaturalist to upload observations in local wildlife areas, around your neighborhood, in your own yard — or at Kirke Park. Citizen Scientists Unite!
YOU CAN HELP BEES
1) Grow a Bee Garden
Yards and gardens — even balconies — are an important part of the ecosystem. Gardeners are powerful. New studies show that adding habitat greenspaces (even small ones) to urban areas boosts insect species diversity by a factor of seven. Every Little Bit Counts! Added together, our gardens can become a Homegrown National Park, to regenerate biodiversity and restore ecosystem function.
If you want to garden for the bees…
- aim for continuous bloom and diversity (flower shapes, sizes, seasons)
- rethink your lawn (add bulbs or clover, make it smaller)
- tolerate some untidiness
- join the “No Mow May” movement and try to “Leave the Leaves“
- prioritize flowering trees (which offer a large amount of nectar & pollen), natives (for specialist bees), very early and late season blooms (for bumble bee queens emerging from or preparing for hibernation)
Different flower shapes feed different bees






2) Provide Habitat
Urban bees, in particular, really need habitat. Most (70%) of our native solitary bees nest in the ground, the rest (30%) are cavity-nesters.
To welcome native bees into your yard, offer them…
Bee habitat includes shelter and water





3) Go Natural
- Avoid pesticides especially neonicotinoids, which are systematic, and can kill bees by persisting in the nectar and pollen of treated plants. If you’re not sure if the nursery where you buy plants uses neonicotinoids, ASK THEM! If you let them know this is important to you, they might change their offerings.
4) Bee an Advocate
- observe and appreciate; try keeping a journal or joining iNaturalist
- connect with, learn from, and teach others
- spread the word!