Native Pollinators
Preserving Biodiversity
Native pollinators come in all shapes and sizes. There are aproximately 20,000 species of native bees worldwide and around 17,500 species of butterflies. Some are so small that they are barely noticable, others are big and beautiful like Monarch butterflies and Bumblebees. They are all unique and extremely important to the vitality of life on earth.
Did you Know?
That 75% of Native Bees are solitary ground nesters.
This large group of pollinators needs undisturbed soil in order to thrive.
There are an amazing variety of native bees in Oregon. We have Twenty-five species of Bumblebees, two types of Mason bees, Large Carpenter bees, Small Carpenter bees, Miner bees, Leafcutter bees, Digger bees, and exquisite Metalic Green Sweat bees!
You can help protect them, enjoy their beauty, and benefit from their pollination by creating your own native bee habitat.
Native Bee Habitat
Wilding: Designate a wild area of your yard. It doesn't have to be huge, a 10' square would be nice. It can be any shape and the size can vary.
Planting: Add a variety of flowering native plants to your wild area. Oregon State University has a great list of native pollinator plants for you to get started with. You can also find more resources in our Planting for Bees resource section.
Cleaning: Don't. Nature loves messy. Native bees need undisturbed ground, old plant stems, and rotted wood to make their nests.
Check out our Native Bee Resources for more information on how to support these important pollinators.
Pollinator Resources
~ Books and Publications ~
Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest
A beautiful and thorough book on the Butterflies in our region. This is absilutely a must have for anyone into native pollinators. You can purchase it on Caitlin's website.
This is a good starter guide for identifying the natives bees of Oregon. It just scratches the surface of our 600+ species, but it's a nice overview. It can be downloaded here.
The Bees of the Willamette Valley
An excellent resource for our region. The photos are stunning and the descriptions provide a great way to begin identifying our native species. It can be downloaded here.
This is a very thorough book on Bumblebees. While it's not Oregon specific, it goes into a lot of detail on their lifecycle and has excellent resources for identifying each species.
Planting for Pollinators
~ Books and Publications ~
Not Oregon specific, but a great starter guide and the native range of each plant is shown as a map.
Native Plants for Willamette Valley yards
An excellent resource for our local area. The plants are arranged by size, from large trees to small shade friendly ground cover. It's a free publication that can be downloaded here.
Plants for Pollinators in Oregon
This is a very thorough publication with a lot of Oregon specific information. One of many nice things they've included is a list of the beneficial insects each plant attracts. It's a free publication that can be downloaded here.
While not specific to planting for bees, this is my favorite Permaculture book and covers principles that can and should be applied to any gardening adventure.
This handbook is a fantastic resource written specifically to help gardeners, landscape professionals and ecologists in the Willamette Valley design and plant communities of native prairie plants in urban garden settings.