Nikola - June 1, 2025
Abuzz With Life
June is starting up with heaps of blooms and eager pollinators ready to play their part in the synergy of Summer! Of course we have a huge love for bees here as they supply a bounty of offerings to us from beeswax to honey and much more! There truly are a seemingly endless amount of ways that bees so handily contribute to our lives. (If you didn’t catch it, feel free to check out March’s blog post ‘Incorporating Natural Materials into The Home’ all about some of our favorite household items sourced from bees) We wanted to celebrate our pollinator friends, the bees, by including a pollinator friendly seed packet with any order of candles this month!
JWe can’t praise bees enough! Alongside the many tangible goodies that come from bees there are many complex and long living relationships between pollinators and people that we reap the benefits of. 90% of flowering plants rely on pollinators for their pollination process. Without this help we wouldn’t be enjoying nearly as many fantastical walks through a flower garden or an abundant orchard. Because bees and other pollinators play such a large role in the success of so many plants, without them the diversity of plant species would suffer greatly. This doesn’t just affect the surface level beauty of our world but also the foods we eat. Around one third of all food is directly affected by the health and presence of pollinators. Just a few ways that these relationships between edible plants and pollinators manifest are; size, taste and amount of fruit or vegetables bore by a plant, quality sugar content and decreased heavy metals found in plants favored by bees. It is hard to imagine just how bland the scenery and our plates may be without bees!
Although we have a soft spot for bees and they are at the forefront of pollination, there is an incredibly biodiverse team of pollinators out there! From vertebrates such as birds or bats to thousands of types of bugs, the scope of helpers in the natural world is vast. Each pollinator brings its own importance to the process. In some cases such as with bees or hummingbirds a pollinator’s main purpose is to transfer pollen themselves but, in others the pollinators are still crucial to the pollinating process by encouraging balanced soil, protection to plants from harsh weather and general health of ecosystems while passively bringing pollen from one place to another. Ants, rodents and even lizards contribute to nutrient soil while bats help control invasive species of bugs that may hinder a garden. Birds disperse seeds and pollen, indirectly helping with soil erosion making for a richer family of plants. Each of these animals create a web of interdependence not just within the animal and plant world but with us humans as well. This is where our humble seed packets come in!
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Doing our part to uplift our pollinator helpers can make a difference in our own backyards while also causing local and global change. A great step in supporting pollinators that is just as fun for us as it is for the bees is adding pollinator friendly plants to the garden. When pollinators have an inviting place to land they are more likely to stick around, increasing the health of their species and the plant life. While the fancy of pollinators may vary from area to area there are a few tried and true flowers sure to please such as Beebalm, Milkweed, Lavender, Black Eyed Susan, Cone Flower and Marigolds. Offering safe places for pollinators to live isn’t exclusive to planting either. Taking a week off of mowing, reducing the mowed space in the lawn all together or leaving some brush or kindling piles around are more ways we can protect pollinators (and bask in taking one more thing off of our to-do list). Buying local honey can help beekeepers continue nurturing happy native hives. Turns out indulging in a sweet treat just keeps this synergy going between us and pollinators!
Showing love to our pollinators can be woven into so many unexpected actions throughout our day. The lively cooperation of all the sometimes overlooked little critters in our garden is a perfect example for us to follow. The instinctive and caring nature of pollinators lays a simple, sweet path for us to take as we slow down, make note of what we can do to strengthen our relationships and lean on those who help us too. It seems that the more we can mimic nature’s effortless coexistence the happier and healthier us and our pollinator friends can be! Happy Pollinator Month!
