Bee Calendar!
Welcome to Fall,
We still have sunflowers here in San Francisco, however, I’m sure many of you are well into winter!
Thanks for all your suggestions about what to do about seeds for next year. I’ve done some research on harvesting our current seeds. It turns out that if the pollen on those sunflowers came from a different variety, we’ll get a hybrid which would mean everyone would have slightly different plants. We couldn’t really compare our visitation rates then because we wouldn’t know if the attractiveness to bees was the same. I’m now talking to some of seed companies to see if they will contribute!
If you are interested in finding a way to contribute this year, even if you couldn’t get data collected, we have a GORGEOUS CALENDAR that you can get on our website. It was designed by one of our bee-spotters, Celeste, and can be had for a donation of $14. The calendar has photographs of some of our common bees and short descriptions that will help you identify some of the bees in your garden next year. We think it is a great gift for the gardeners in your life. I’ve posted a copy of some of the pages on the website where you can sign into purchase it. The link to see the calendar and the form for buying them is http://www.greatsunflower.org/en/2010-bee-calendar. You can also find it on the home page. To make sure we get these shipped before the holidays, we’ll only take orders until the first week of December. All the calendars will be shipped that first week of December!
Happy Fall.
Gretchen