Colorado's Pollinator Highway

Colorado's Pollinator Highway

Kelly Allen
Kelly Allen
Colorado is home to over 950 native bee species, butterflies and other insect pollinators.

They are all vital to the state's economy and food security.

State beekeepers are optimistic that the state's first "Pollinator Highway won't be its last.

"A lot of the crops that need pollination happen early in the Spring or late in the Summer. And mid-summer is our time, we call it the dirth. That's the time when there's no food for bees. It's something really important that needs to be filled in."

Tina Sebestyen with the Colorado Bee Keepers Association says a state resolution designates I-76 from the Nebraska state line to Arvada, as the Colorado Pollinator Highway, allowing landowners and other groups to develop pollinator habitat where appropriate. It also allows the department to accept gifts, grants or donations to install signage for public education.

"We all know how important it is to have pollinators for our food. That three quarters of our food relies on pollinization There are moths and wild bees and native critters and of course honey bees. And all of those suffer from a lack of food. So it's important for our agriculture producers to have bees have things to live on other that just what they're producing."

Nationwide, Honeybee pollination alone adds more than $15 billion in value to our agricultural crops each year.

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