The Chatham County Center of North Carolina Cooperative Extension and the Chatham County Beekeepers’ Association celebrated the third annual National Pollinator Week on Saturday, June 27, from 10:00 am til 2:00 pm on The Lawn in front of at Chatham Marketplace at Chatham Mills in Pittsboro, NC.

Download the program brochure.

For more information about pollinator conservation, visit the Pollinator Conservation Guide at Cooperative Extension’s Growing Small Farms website.

Visit the Chatham County Beekeepers’ Association for more information about beekeeping and monthly meetings.

View of the Pollinator Day festivities from the porch of Chatham Marketplace. A big tent provided welcome shade and relief from the heat. The pollinator garden can be seen in the foreground.

NCDA State Apiary Inspection Supervisor Don Hopkins did several sessions inside the “bee cage”, which allowed viewers to see a hive being worked up close.

I led tours of Extension’s new Pollinator Garden at Chatham Marketplace. These painted ladies are enjoying a stand of purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea).

Hannah Cowell is a frequent visitor to the pollinator garden and always brightens my day! This bed features herbs as well as native perennials and vines (as well as a little girl who loves cupcakes and going barefoot!).

Sneezeweed (Helenium sp.) and coneflower (Echinacea) provide stunning color as well as valuable nectar and pollen.

Honey bees as well as the native bumble bees (above) were all over the sourwood tree we planted last fall.

Chatham beekeepers Rick Kondracki and Ray Wise answered questions and shared their knowledge of beekeeping all day. Rick brought some frames of bees that were just emerging from their cells. It takes 21 days for a worker bee to develop from egg to larva to pupa to adult.

On day 21, the adult bees chew their way through the wax capping and out of their cells and emerge to join the colony.

The new bees were a big attraction for visitors of all ages! It is fascinating to watch them emerge and they are very docile.

Hannah Hart McReynolds holds a honey bee that has just emerged from its cell. These “new” bees are incapable of stinging.

Shane and Calvin Conroy hold a frame of honey bees emerging from their cells.

Chatham Marketplace’s General Manager Mary DeMare gets in on the action too, bonding with a new worker bee.