I missed the national day of recognition for Honeybees (Aug 16). A “wordl” poster created by the New York Bee Sanctuary does a fantastic job of illustrating how much we have to thank the bees for maintaining our food supplies.
Wordls are picture representations of the vocabulary associated with a particular subject. The size of the text is proportional to the importance of the subject for that word. Wordls are easy to create for any article, website, or random group of words using Tagxedo.com
Honeybees pollinate dozens of crop species in addition to a multitude of flowers. Some, like this red salvia seem designed especially for honeybees — in fact, it’s a bit of a tight squeeze to crawl into the corolla of the flower and down to the nectar source.
A tight fit, but worth it. Always nice to have an exclusive food source.
Wikipedia has an impressive list of crop species dependent on bee pollination, so thank the bees by planting more nectar-rich bee wildflowers in your garden. You can read more about this here.
Back Yard Biology 