Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Bee Hunt

Our seeds arrived and were put in the ground last weekend before last. We should be seeing sprouts any day now.

Here is an update from Great Sunflower Experiment...


------------THE BEE HUNT IS ON!------------

*Dear Great Sunflower Gardeners,*

We now have over 32,000 participants across the United States and Canada! What
an amazing response. Thank you.
*Collecting data!* We have had our first data entered into the website so, the
Great Sunflower Project is officially opened for buzz-ness.

We would like everyone try to sample on the first and third weekend of each
month that they have flowers on their plants. That would mean that if you
happened to have gotten seeds early and have flowers now, we would like to have
you sample this upcoming weekend, June 7 or 8. We are happy to have data from
other days if this weekend doesn't work because of weather or your schedule. You are also welcome to send us data from every week if you have the time. This
is a project where the more data we get sent, the better the project.

You will want to sample on a warm, not too windy, sunny day. Many bees do not
fly on cloudy days. Pick one sunflower plant and time the bees come to that
plant (not just to one flower on that plant). You are welcome to stop timing
after 30 minutes. Most of the people who have sent in early data, have not
gotten five bees in the thirty minutes. I expect that will change as the
summer progresses.
Let us know if you have any questions or if we can be helpful. You can enter
data online or send the data sheet in to us. I'll also post a fax number on the
website for faxing datasheets.

*Public Gardens: * If you have a garden that you are willing to allow the
general public to use for participating in our project, please let us know at
sfbee@sfsu.edu. We would then list your garden as a"public garden" and the
address would be visible to anyone who accessed the website.

*Supporting the Great Sunflower Project or how to spend your rebate!* As a
final note, we've had several people ask how they could make contributions to
supporting the project. Wow, would that help. The money would help us finish
getting the map up on the website, mail out the final seed packets and most
importantly, create ways to make what we are discovering easily available to
you. The university has set up a link for us that you can find at
http://www.greatsunflower.org/en/Support-us.

Thanks!

Gretchen
The Great Sunflower Project
http://www.greatsunflower.org



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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i've seen 3 bees this season. a hummingbird visits my flowers every morning, so i've stopped cutting them.