[Pollinator] Should we tell them?

[Peter Bernhardt]

Has anyone been to a Whole Foods store in the last couple of weeks?  A week
ago I went in to buy a piece of fish.  When I entered the vegetable section
 I was greeted by two women who announced that "Pollinators are
Endangered."  I was invited to make a "bug hotel" to attract them to my
garden.  Yes, they were assembling twigs and broken stalks into balls
secured by wire.  I told them that the most recent publication on these bee
motels is that they were not good for bees (most are ground nesters) and
were more likely to attract bee predators like certain wasps.  One of the
Whole Food Employees was miffed.  She snapped, "Good, I love wasps."

On the way out of the store more employees stood by a table offering tiny,
shallow, pots the circumference of 50 cent pieces.  There was dry, potting
medium in the pots and they threw seeds of some composite (probably a
coreopsis) on the surface."Would you like to learn how to garden with
wildflowers and help our pollinators?" one asked. "I already garden with
wildflowers," I replied.

 "Well," if you go inside they will show you how to make a bug hotel."  I
repeated pretty much what I'd said to the hotel makers.  I also suggested
they might join NAPPC and explained the acronym.  It seemed best to leave
and not tell them that those seeds wouldn't do very well in such a tiny,
shallow pot.

Here in St. Louis, the Whole Foods employees are quite young and they are
always full of advice.  Would it be possible for us to offer them accurate
information?  Currently, the St. Louis Zoo does a very nice job educating
its members about pollinators during pollinator week in June.  Our lab puts
up posters, exhibits boxes of specimens. We sell some of our books and
photos.

Peter
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