Midland is one of seven cities, currently, in the state of Texas to be recognized as a Monarch City. We are working hard with the City of Midland to bring projects with Monarchs in mind.
What do Monarch need? A safe place to migrate through!
You can help by creating habitat! Plant native flowers, protect native milkweed, create a shallow and clean water source, don't harm them using pesticides, turn off outdoor lights at night, and support a Monarch conservation group.
Also learn more and teach others.
While pollinators come in all different shapes and sizes, the most proficient pollinators are bees. Did you know that honey bees are not native to North America? They were brought over in the 1600's because North America native bees didn't produce the honey that honey bees do.
Over 800 different species of native bees have been identified in just Texas. Most of these bees tend to be solitary which means they don't have hives like a honey bee colony does. We do have some species that are colony-minded. Any of the nine different bumble bees that are native to Texas are colony-minded. Texas Parks & Wildlife has a great guide to identifying which bumble bee you might be looking at. The difference between bumble bee colonies and honey bee colonies is that a bumble bee colony only lasts a season, whereas a honey bee colony can last several years. Bumble bee colonies start off in the spring and last just until winter when the queen goes into hibernation.
According to the USDA Forest Service, butterflies, moths, even wasps, some flies, some beetles, even one type of mosquito, birds and bats. There are eight species of butterflies that recognized as pollinators and four species of moths. The wasps that are considered pollinators include the paper wasp, yellow jacket, and sphecidae wasp. Hummingbirds are the most common bird species that is a pollinator. The lesser long-nosed bat and the Mexican long-tongued bat, drink nectar from flowers, and act as pollinators along the way.
In the US alone, pollinators have an impact of over 10 BILLION dollars every year. Globally, it is estimated that they impact over 3 TRILLION dollars. Almost 80% of all of our food and plant-based industrial products require pollination by animals. When bees and other pollinators visit our food crops, the produce tends to be larger and more flavorful.
Pollinators are very important to the life we lead so we need to make sure we do what we can to help them out. Here are some of the simple ways you can help out and still maintain a beautiful home and garden.
Keep Midland Beautiful, Inc
3500 N A St Ste 1500 • Midland, TX 79705
(432) 688-7745 main • (432) 688-7746 fax