Native pollinators are in the news, and we’re discovering every day how important — and imperiled — they are. The Cable Natural History Museum’s 2018 exhibit, “Bee Amazed,” showcases the rainbow of bees that call the Northwoods home.
The exhibit opened May 1 and runs through March 2019. Visitors will “bee” amazed by their beauty and diversity. From shiny green to furry orange and iridescent blue, native bees are not what you’d expect.
Most of them nest in solitary burrows and none will sting you unprovoked. Surprisingly, they are more efficient than honeybees at pollinating most of our favorite fruits and vegetables. But they need our help to thrive. Habitat destruction, pesticides, and climate change are causing more than half of all species of bees to be in decline.
To guide visitors through the exhibit, the museum enlisted the help of six Bee Buddies. Visitors take a photo with their favorite bee, and then select a Bee Buddy card to carry through the exhibit, then look for their Bee Buddy’s symbol as they explore stations about diversity, pollination, the seasons, nesting and conservation.
At the pollination station, visitors will discover how native bees shake the pollen right out of blueberry and cranberry blossoms, and learn how blue orchard mason bees pollinate apple blossoms while playing a vintage pinball machine.
On the bee phenology mural, visitors can follow the lives of four bees as they emerge, reproduce and forage on flowers throughout the summer. Don’t forget to push the buttons. Each bee’s path through the seasons lights up with a string of animated LED lights.
Most of the native bees are hard-working single mothers. Except for the colonial bumble bees, they build their nests and gather food for their young all by themselves. But the museum also has built a bumble bee colony big enough to make visitors feel like a queen. Area residents can make every bee feel like a queen when they include native flowers and other components to transform a yard into an excellent habitat for bees.
Just as bees partner with flowers, the CNHM staff partnered with a crew of volunteers to design and build this exhibit. The museum also received grant funding from the Four Cedars Environmental Fund of the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation and from the C.D. Besadny Conservation Grant Program. Through their generosity, the museum also was able to bring in bee author Heather Holm as a consultant for the exhibit, and to fund a variety of bee-related programming this summer.
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