But first, Kentucky is home to many types of native pollinators.

From bumblebees to butterflies, these species play a vital role in keeping our Kentucky ecosystems alive and well.

I got to join with the staff from the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves to do some fieldwork to learn more about these precious animals and their importance.

[music playing] Native plants and wild pollinators are just unbelievably intertwined.

Pollinators are essential for the existence of plants.

They need pollinators to move pollen between the plants in order for them to produce seed and fruits.

So, without pollinators, most plants would not be able to exist.

Imagine how drab life would be without wildflowers driving down the side of the road.

Or a monarch or a yellow swallowtail flying through your yard.

[music playing] Going into a prairie in Kentucky, there's a lot of insect noises.

You can hear bees buzzing and flying around.

It's kind of a feeling of excitement, of discovery.

You never know what you're going to find.

[music playing] Did you find something?

Yeah, yeah.

What did you catch?

I got a bumblebee.

That's so cool.

So, this is what you're looking for out here.

Why are you studying these?

Yeah.

Well, we are doing a statewide inventory of all of the bees, the native bees of Kentucky.

We don't even know what bees occur in our state.

There could be at least 500.

So, we're just scouring the whole state looking for bees.

Why is it important to have a census like this?

Well, we can't protect what we don't know.

And so, we need to figure out what types of native bees occur in our different natural areas so that we know which ones are rare, which ones are common.

That way we can focus and prioritize our conservation efforts.

[music playing] The primary methods that we use to catch native bees are bee bowls and then netting.

So, we have a passive method, which is the bee bowls, and an active method, which is the net.

A bee bowl is a little cup that's covered in yellow, blue, or white paint.

And then, we set the bee bowls up on poles that are between two feet and three feet up off of the ground so that they will attract the bees.

We only keep these traps out for one day.

We don't want to decimate populations.

We're only looking to get a quick glimpse at what species are present on the landscape.

We will take all of these bees back to our entomology lab and look at them underneath of a microscope.

Our experts will pin them, create specimens and have them ID'd to species so that we can continue making our inventory.

[grass swishing] The different types of pollinators, we have bees, which have evolved specifically to collect pollen.

They've got hairs on their legs and under their bellies.

When they go onto a flowering plant, they collect the pollen and then move that from plant to plant, and then also use that pollen to feed their young.

Many native plants require specific types of pollinators in order for them to be able to set seed.

Native bees can be found in so many different habitats.

Seventy percent of them are ground-nesting bees, so there's just little cavities that you'll see on hikes, in your backyard, in trees.

There are just bees nesting everywhere.

Butterflies and moths, nectar on the plants, and then they collect pollen incidentally and then move that from plant to plant.

But butterflies and moths travel longer distances.

So, that connects plant populations across the landscape.

There's just an immense diversity of landscapes in this area.

In order to protect diversity of pollinators and of plants, we have to protect all of these places.

A lot of the prairie land, a lot of the plains and regions have soil that is particularly good for farming.

So, a lot of that land has been now turned into growing all kinds of different crops, which are good for people, but not so good for all the insects and pollinators that relied on those fields as habitat.

[music playing] Tara, why should people care about what's going on out here?

Why is it important, do you think?

Yeah, it's important to understand and catalog all the pollinators that we have here because humans are a part of the environment as well, and pollinators also pollinate a lot of the foods that we eat.

So, it's all connected.

So, not to oversimplify, but it really kind of is the circle of life out here, right?

Exactly.

[music playing] [bees buzzing] Tara, Robert, this has been a lot of fun.

Let's get back to work, okay?

Let's do it.

There's more to be discovered.

[grass swishing]