Welcome to 2010!

Thanks to your help 2009 was an epic year for The Great Sunflower Project. With over 50 thousand participants we are reaching our goal of documenting bee pollination in the US and developing strategies to protect and restore native bees where they are threatened. Building on the momentum from 2009, we are excited to get going this spring! We have made some changes that I want to share early in the year.

Welcome to Fall,

We still have sunflowers here in San Francisco, however, I’m sure many of you are well into winter!

Happy Labor Day!

We had some trouble with the site over the last few days. It turned out to be a hardware problem that took longer than usual to identify. I apologize.

A call for samples, clarifying the protocol and a quick up date.

Happy mid July! Remember to sample and to encourage more sampling, we’ve changed the time to 15 minutes.

We've written a small guide in powerpoint to allow you to hone your bee identification skills. You can gets some tips and test yourself by following this link.

The Grant for Change is a program sponsored by Nau, a small clothing company based in Portland, Oregon. This company is serious about sustainability and has decide to give $10,000 to an individual or small team working to instigate lasting, positive change. You can learn more about the grant at www.nau.com. Even if a nominee doesn't end up winning, it is a great way for NAU to help raise the profile of some really worthy efforts.

If you'd like to vote, you can find us at:

http://www.nau.com/collective/grant-for-change/gretchen-lebuhn-356.html

Dear All,

I did my first sample last week – 30 minutes and no bees. We’ve moved to a new house with not much more than dirt for a garden and gosh, the bees are really not there. It will be so interesting to see how that changes as I restore the yard to natives (and a few vegetables!).

You can't tell from online - but we made the front page!

Here is the link

Dear All,

If you haven’t gotten seeds yet, the next shipment is going on the week of May 11th! We have over 65,000 people who have requested seeds. I am just thrilled. We also were featured on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle complete with photos. I'll post a link on the website! I also still don't have funds for any staff so, please be patient if you email us. I have a couple of announcements.

First, as you wait for an opportunity to watch bee activities on your Lemon Queen Sunflowers, we have two things you can do.

In 2009, we have expanded the plants from which you can collect data. If you have limited time, please ONLY do the Sunflower!! If you have a little bit of extra time, add the Goldenrod (Solidago candensis).

We have a set of "key plants" that we've chosen to focus on - though you can collect data on other plants if you would like:

Bee balm
Cosmos
Rosemary
Tickseed
Purple coneflower

We sent out two rounds of seeds in early April. I actually didn't get mine in my mailbox until April 15 so, I expect many of you are getting them right now. There were about 80 addresses that were entered that either didn't have full information or the person had moved. I'll try to post that list somewhere. The next round of seeds will leave here the last week of April and should arrive in mailboxes the first week of May. If you signed up in 2009, you will definitely get sent seeds. If you signed up before then, you need to check back in using the link on the homepage.

Just a reminder:

I’m about to turn in the mailing list for this round of seeds.

If you haven’t had time or the site was too busy (apologies) – please check in again by clicking: here.

If you can’t remember your password, click on reset password (http://www.greatsunflower.org/en/user/password) and we’ll walk you through a reset.

Thanks so much for joining us!

Gretchen
The Queen Bee

Hooray for Pollinators and Sunflowers in 2009! We are ready to mail out seeds!!

We’re pretty sure almost everyone needs the smile of a sunflower in their yard this year!

Jerry Bromenshenk has been involved with Colony Collapse Disorder
from the very beginning. He and his colleagues at the University of
Montana, the U.S Army's Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center, his
own company called Bee Alert Technology, and BVS, Inc. have ferreted
out an amazing amount of information on this Disorder and are close
to understanding the answers to this problem.

Because of their work, the beekeeping community is more aware of the
best management practices over time to combat the worst of the
regular pests and diseases bees have, and this year the almond

Here is a quick story about Fern and Shannon

The Great Sunflower Project is part of a program called the Birds and Bees Challenge. We are delighted to announce that we received an endorsement from the National Forum on Children and Nature as one of 30 projects nationwide that demonstrate new and creative ways to reconnect kids with nature.. For more on the announcement see http://www.conservationfund.org/node/865

Dear Sunflower Participants,

If you haven’t gotten a late September sample in, now would be a good time!

Happy Labor Day!

If you haven't gotten a late August sample, it would be a good time to do it!

I want to start with some thank yous. I've had several people write or call and tell me how much they are enjoying participating or how important they think the project is to bees. As I've said before, most science is done as a solo exercise. I find participating in this project the most exciting thing that I've done as a scientist and this in large part is because of your enthusiasm for the project. Thank you for the constant reminder of how lucky I am to be able to do this work.

Greetings!

If you didn't get a sample done last weekend, , this would be a good time to get it done! You also might consider dead-heading your sunflower (removing all the dead flowers) to extend flowering. If you do this, we would LOVE to have you mail us one of your flowers. We'll count the number of seeds in that flower head which will allow us to relate your data on the number of visits to what it actually means for plants. Do put your user name and address in the envelope so that we can tie the two things together! I'll put the address below.

Dear Bee Hunters,

This is the 3rd weekend of the month so, it would be a good time to collect data. If you can't do it this weekend try to get a sunny day in before the end of the month. Personally, I'm finding it hard to find a fog-free day here in San Francisco!

Happy 4th of July!

• Thank you I'd like to start by saying thank you for participating in the Great Sunflower Project. What a wonderful group you are. As a bee biologist, it has been so gratifying to see how many people are willing to help us take the steps to preserving our pollinators. I especially wish to thank those who have donated to the project. We are so, so, so grateful for your contributions.

We are getting our last seeds shipped out. As it is getting late in the year, we are going to ship seeds next spring to anyone new who signs up. If you are already a participant, we'll ask you later this summer if you'd like to participate again. Next year, provided we have funding, we'll get seeds out early!

Thanks!

The Sunflower Team

We are currently working on raising some extra money to cover the cost of mailings for this year!

If you feel like helping our finances, we would love any contribution. You can find more information here

Hi Everyone!

It's been an exciting spring. The Great Sunflower Project (www.greatsunflower.org) has almost 30,000 participants and people are planting in every state in the United States and every province in Canada. Wow!

We've had a few issues getting seeds out and appreciate your patience. We originally planned to have four of us stuffing all the envelopes! When we had 12,000 people sign up in one week, we realized we needed another plan. At the same time, we tested the seeds that American meadows had sent us. Instead of the guaranteed 80% germination rate, we planted 102 seeds and got SIX plants. I have to say that this was about my worst nightmare.

Fortunately, American meadows has replaced the seed and sent us a new shipment of packets. So, if you haven't received your packet of seeds yet, they are being mailed tomorrow from San Francisco. I haven't had the opportunity to test these seeds but American meadows says 80% germination - again.... I've got my fingers crossed.

Thanks for your patience!

From thedailygreen.com

4.14.2008 7:49 AM

Survey: Beekeepers Lost 35% of Bees This Winter

Bumblebees Also Hurting ... And Where's That Government Aid?

There was a Senate Briefing last week, called by Senators Boxer (D-CA), Casey (D-PA) and Collins (R-ME) on the decline of honey bees and native pollinators and the threat posed to agriculture. Speaking at the briefing besides the senators were:

May Berenbaum, Chair of the National Academy of Science Committee on the Status Of North American Pollinators; Jeff Pettis from the USDA;

We've had a huge response to our sunflower project and have been scrambling to keep up with mailing seeds. Because of that, we've chosen to use a variety of different seed packets while waiting for our "custom" ones. If you got a pack labelled wildflower, know that all those seeds are sunflowers. We had just run out of sunflower packets and wanted to get them to you quickly!

Thanks to Daniel for including us in the Extension Newsletter

http://okeechobee.ifas.ufl.edu/News%20columns/Fertilizers+Sunflowers.htm

Ginny Stibolt, who took our signature bee photo, has done a marvelous podcast about the project for the Jacksonville, FL paper. You can find it right here.

Look at our coverage in Sunset magazine online!

Link to sunset

For those of you who weren't up at 5:40 AM and listening to KCBS, you can listen to my interview about the Great Sunflower Project! Right here!

The SF Examiner did a great interview about the project. It's always so funny to see what a news story picks up. I was surprised by the interest in bee stings this time! You can see it at:

http://www.examiner.com/a-1280496~3_Minute_Interview__Gretchen_LeBuhn.ht...

Gretchen