(Water is Life.)
Our summers keep getting hotter every year and just like us humans, most creatures need to stay hydrated to stay alive. If you already put out a bowl of water for your pets, birds or other wildlife, its easy to adapt these to accommodate our tinier friends who do so much every day that keeps our plants pollinated and us fed.
Bee Watering Stations- A simple way to create pollinator habitat
It’s really quick and easy to create watering stations for the pollinators in your life. All you need are rocks and a container that can hold water.
Any size glass bowl, a clay or ceramic plant saucer, or a bird bath would all work great. Avoid using metal or plastic as it can get pretty heated up on a warm day.
The rocks act as landing spots for pollinators that would otherwise drown in a deep bowl of water. And this is a great use of all the pocket rocks you or the kiddos in your life seem to accumulate. I don’t know about you, but I tend to pick up certain particularly appealing rocks anywhere I go, only to find them in my pockets when I do my laundry and I hear them banging around in the machine!
Let your creativity run wild, this is something you can’t do wrong
You can use any type of rocks, marbles or even crystals and gemstones. It can be useful and pretty garden feature whether you use a variety of sizes and colors of rocks, or if you prefer, a bowl of marbles or one color of glass pebbles.
I’d recommend doing an image search for “Pollinator watering station” for a lovely variety of options.
Some tips I’ve learnt:
- It’s a good idea to site your watering stations somewhere that it would be easy for you to frequently refill them with fresh water. This helps to reduce the water from getting too mucky and keeps your bowls full and ready for visitors, while also discouraging mosquitoes, who lay their eggs in stagnant water.
- Place your station in a place where it would get some direct sunlight part of the day as the light reflecting off the surface helps to signal to pollinators that water is available.
- Once your station has had water consistently for some time, the pollinators will get to know that water is available in those spots and it gets pretty busy. It can be fun to have it somewhere that you get to enjoy the sights.
- While not necessary, it can be a quite stunning aesthetic to add a few fresh flowers into your bowl, letting them float around your bowl. The colors and fragrances of the flowers likely help to attract pollinators as well.
