It’s been a disappointing couple of days with my tomato plants, although this photo doesn’t really indicate that.
The tomatoes were coming along nicely when something–probably a squirrel– completely stripped one plant of all the green tomatoes, doing a fair amount of damage to the stems in the process.
It tried to do the same thing to this plant but the stems weren’t quite as sturdy. So after breaking 2 off, it gave up and went away.
I think that’s a partial win for me. Hard to say.
So in the process of pruning back all the damage and broken stems, all of a sudden I noticed a smallish black and yellow bee hovering.
I stepped back a moment and it landed on the top of the bamboo stake and entered.
Unlike most other people, I cannot get good photos of bees. All I have here is “bee butt.”
A little sleuthing determined that it’s a type of sweat bee–not the cool metallic green one, but a black one with yellow stripes.
And it’s a tomato pollinator. So, if I can keep the squirrels away, I should have a nice crop with this plant.
Where’s my pesky barking dog when I need her? I thought that no squirrel moved on this property without her knowledge. Apparently I am mistaken.
Gardendaze 
I sort of wondered about that. I mean, I see those ‘hotels’ about, and they look like they contain cut up stakes.
I’ve researched those a lot. I have always sort of wanted one–I thought they were very cool looking. But what I’ve found is that once the tubes in the hotels are used by the pollinators are used, they need to be replaced if you intend to keep attracting pollinators–and that seemed like an awful lot of work.
They also say that you really need to have the right sort of tubes for pollinators in your area–again, who’s looking into this?
And if you have the wrong sort of tubes, you could attract pollinators that prey on one another.
So you see why I don’t have a cute little pollinator hotel in my yard. It’s every bee for itself–and it seems to be working out okay.
Karla