In mid-summer, Nebraska gardeners are harvesting the fruits of their toil. They’re not the only ones who’ve been hard at work.

Bees, moths, flies, beetles, wasps, birds, and bats are among Nebraska’s pollinators. When they visit flowers to feed, they transport pollen from one plant to another. Nebraska’s leading crops – corn and soy – don’t need pollinators to thrive (they rely on the wind), but our state’s gardens and orchards do.

Cucumbers and coriander, pears and plums, tomatoes and turnips are among the 150 food crops in the United States that rely on pollinators. Nebraska’s state insect, the honeybee, also makes a sweet treat to share. 

The Bee Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln works with beekeepers in Scottsbluff, North Platte, Grand Island, Nebraska City, and other locations statewide to develop management strategies for healthy hives – and bountiful honey harvests. In addition, the Bee Lab educates the public on pollinators and ecosystem diversity. The lab also sells honey – by the honey bear, the jug, or the 60-pound bucket – to support university research on the stressors that impact pollinator health.

Not far from Lincoln, another community is also doing its part to support pollinators by planting native Nebraska plant species and limiting pesticide use. In 2021, Bellevue became the first and only city in Nebraska awarded a Bee City USA designation. City parks, public spaces, and homeowners’ lawns feature pollinator favorites, like coneflower, gayfeather, and bee balm.

Nebraska pollinators depend on specific plants and flowers. Eastern carpenter bees love penstemon. Blue-green sweat bees aim for aster. Soldier beetles line up for goldenrod. And monarch butterflies go ga-ga for milkweed.

Ami Sheffield, one of our photo essay’s featured photographers, plants milkweed for the monarchs and parsley for the black swallowtails. She also keeps a fridge full of butterfly chrysalises in her Omaha home until the temperatures become mild and she can safely bring them outside to escape and spread their wings. Sometimes Sheffield starts growing butterflies from the eggs she finds. Other times, she discovers plump caterpillars that need a safe place to begin their transformation.

Recently walking her dogs, Pixel and Halen, around Zorinsky Lake, Sheffield discovered three giant monarch caterpillars on one milkweed leaf – prime targets for a bird’s juicy meal. She brought the caterpillars home and tended to them as they created their chrysalises. A few weeks later, they emerged, unfolding their brilliant orange wings.

Sheffield shares her love for butterflies with her sister, Rebecca Cuadrado, who has a monarch way station – an intentionally managed habitat with food and shelter – in her Omaha garden and regularly tosses “milkweed bombs” onto the grassy strips along highways and the weedy environs of unused urban lots. Ami and Rebecca grew up near Zorinsky. Their parents encouraged a love of nature in their girls, who caught moths and butterflies in nets and tossed grasshoppers into the webs of hungry spiders. They analyzed their finds under kiddie microscopes and stayed up late in the summer watching fireflies.

Sometimes when Sheffield shows her photos of pollinators to friends, they ask her how she found so many.

She slowed down, she said. She sunk into the stillness of a summer afternoon in Nebraska and discovered they were there all along – in the state’s prairies and forests, riversides and suburban backyards – if one only took the time to notice.