In one word:  Food.  Without pollinators we would have far less food to eat.  No fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, berries, etc.   Eventually even meat would be effected as these animals eat  food plants.  Without pollination,  plants would not produce seed to regenerate the species.  No plants for the animals to eat no meat for us.

Pollinator habitats are essential for our survival as well as animal life.  Even if you live in a city you can contribute to pollinator habitat.  Growing necessary pollen rich food and habitat plants for pollinators strengthens their populations and provides our crops with the pollinators needed to produce  food for us.   It’s a win win situation.  Pollinators survive and so do we.

The best habitat  would have plants native to the area in which you live.  Such plants will sustain your native pollinators.  Setting aside a thin strip of land to help save our pollinators is a small price to pay for our survival.

Who are the pollinators?  The obvious of course are bees.  There are some 19,436 named species of bees around the world (that is truly amazing to me).  Then you have wasps, mosquitos, flies, ants, butterflies, reptiles, bats..etc…

I have a very small yard within city limits and am in the process of making a miniature hedgerow for wildlife and pollinators.  This past gardening year I started taking pictures of my pollinators.  It was really quite enlightening. Doing research on just what insects were visiting is an ongoing educational process.  Below are a few that I have identified so far.

Syrphid fly species (aka Flower fly)

Bottle flies

Sphecid Wasp Steel-blue Cricket Hunter ?

Please view the videos at the   link  below                     http://www.pollinator.org/multimedia.htm

I don’t have any good pictures of the  honeybees, carpenter or bumblebees that visited.

Below are some pictures of other visitors:

large wasp

I have other pictures I can use for identification purposes but they are too blurry to post. It’s hard to take a picture of a moving target. Besides my hands shake.