Many CVN members want their gardens to attract pollinators, and carefully select native plants for this purpose. But how much do we know about the pollinators themselves?
As a joint project, the Environmental Youth Alliance and a project named Border Free Bees prepared a booklet in 2017 to educate the public about insect pollinators. You can download it for free here (PDF, 11.5 MB):
Common Pollinators of British Columbia: A Visual Identification Guide
This booklet is a useful introductory guide that you can use to learn about various categories of insect pollinators: honey bee, bumble bee, hairy belly bee, miner bee, hover fly, butterfly, and wasp.
It begins with some general information, including a diagram of basic insect anatomy. Then the section for each of the seven categories includes a description, a diagram, and clear labelled photos of a few examples from the category.
This is not a field guide, but it’s a fun way to enhance your knowledge of the insect pollinators that visit the flowers in gardens and in the wild. For those who want to identify the insects more specifically, this guide can lead beginners to the correct section of their detailed field guides.
