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Pesticides and herbicides should be avoided if you intend to provide or improve habitat for pollinators. Herbicide use may inadvertently destroy plants that are important to pollinators, which include not only those plants that provide food for adult pollinators, but also those plants that support the larval stages of insect pollinators (e.g. caterpillars). Insecticides harm pollinating insects directly and are also a risk to birds and other animals (including other pollinators) that consume insects.
If you must use pesticides the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has developed recommendations for minimizing the negative impact to pollinators.
Other resources regarding pesticides and pollinators include:
Create or Enhance Pollinator Habitat in Backyards, Farms, and Open Spaces
Provide habitat for pollinators by including a variety of plants in your garden, as well as a water source. Photo by Lynn Betts, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Many pollinators appear to be declining due to factors such as habitat loss and fragmentation, disease, modern agricultural practices, and pesticide use. Home gardeners, farmers, and managers of parks and open spaces can help pollinators by creating or improving habitat. In particular, one can benefit pollinators by providing food resources, nest sites and nest-building materials, and water, and by avoiding the use of pesticides.
To provide food for pollinators, try to use native plants because these are the plants with which native pollinators have evolved. Some highly specialized pollinators may depend on only one or a few plant types for food, shelter, or reproduction. In addition, native plants will be better suited to the growing conditions of your region and therefore generally require less care.
Pollinators will benefit from additional food resources where their habitat has been degraded. But quite often nest sites, overwintering sites, and other resources are in even more limited supply than are food resources. For example, birds, bats, and butterflies require a water source; butterflies require hiding places for pupae; butterflies and bees will benefit from a damp salt lick (a damp or muddy area of soil in which sea salt or wood ashes are mixed); some bees and wasps require mud as nest-building material; other bees use dead trees or tree limbs or open patches of unvegetated earth as nest sites.
Overwintering sites are also in short supply for many pollinators, especially in areas with extensive urban and suburban development. Many homeowners attempt to keep a neat yard and garden area by cleaning up dead leaves and twigs and other structures that could serve as winter shelter for pollinators. To aid pollinators in finding suitable overwintering habitat, consider leaving cut plant stems exposed and leaving twigs and brush in small piles. You may also wish to create artificial nest sites for some pollinators.
Additional Resources on Creating or Enhancing Pollinator Nesting Habitat:
Providing habitat for pollinators can benefit farmers. Crops such as strawberries (Fragaria spp.) are pollinated by native bees and bumble bees. Photo Bob Nichols, USDA NRCS.
If you would like to be convinced of the importance of native pollinators in North America, simply ask a farmer who produces blueberries, strawberries, alfalfa, apples, melons, tomatoes, peppers, cranberries, agave, or squash. These are among the many crop and orchard plants whose pollination is primarily dependent upon native North American pollinators. How and why are native pollinators important to farmers? Some reasons include the following:
1. Native pollinators, such as bumble bees and sweat bees, pollinate some crop and orchard plants more efficiently than the European honey bee, such that fewer bees are required to sufficiently pollinate an acre of crop or orchard plants.
2. Even where honey bees are more efficient, they are not always present and abundant when and where they are needed: native bees and other native pollinators are more likely to be active in colder and wetter conditions, such as early and late in the growing season or at higher latitudes.
3. Honey bee numbers are currently declining, which will likely make native bees and other native pollinators more important.
4. Even when honey bees are present, native bees can cause them to alter their behavior in such a way that the honey bees pollinate crop plants more efficiently than they would in the absence of native bees.
5. Some commercially produced plants, such as tomatoes, peppers, and blueberries are best pollinated by "buzz pollination," in which the bee holds the flower's anthers while vibrating her flight muscles, releasing pollen. This type of pollination is performed by bumble bees and other native North American bees, but not by honey bees.
In consideration of the importance of native pollinators, both for agricultural production and for the conservation of natural communities, many farmers are interested in improving natural habitat or providing artificial habitat for native pollinators. In doing so, they can also help conserve other wildlife and native plants. Some farmers are going so far to provide pollinator habitat and reduce or eliminate pesticide use that they are marketing their products under eco-labels such as "pollinator-friendly."
(M. Shepherd and M. Vaughan, Xerces Society) 
