The Buzz!
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.
In most areas, there is a real shift in the bees as we get to August and September. We start seeing a lot of species that use the various members of the daisy families, including sunflowers. Bees are often divided into two groups: specialists and generalists. A specialist is a bee that only collects pollen from a limited number of genera of plants while generalists use many different types of plants. One of the interesting things that scientists have discovered is that specialist bees almost always specialize on plants that are very common. They almost never specialize on rare species. If you step back and think about it, this makes sense. If you are going to put all your eggs in one basket, you want that to be a very reliable basket!
Most solitary bee species (the ones that aren't honey bees) are only above ground flying as adults for 2-4 weeks. The rest of the year they are in nests as larvae. This is why we ask you to sample for as many months as you have flowers.
Once again, thank you for helping! And a special thanks to those of you who have contributed!
Gretchen
http://www.greatsunflower.org
mail a flower to:
Great Sunflower Project
Dept. of Biology
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94132
Comments
Honey bees in my garden
I have a dozen sunflowers that seed themselves year after year. The bees don't come to them but the Gold Finches love them. The seeds I planted from your program have not germinated this year, they may come up next year, who knows!!
I have seen over a dozen honey bees at one time on my Hyssop plants and my Beautiful Mint plants. In addition to the honey bees, I have the large black and yellow bees. I just checked the plants at 2:30 pm and the bees are very busy on the herbs but none on the sunflowers. It is a beautiful, sunny, 80 degree day.
My son-in-law who lives about 2 miles north of us has 6 hives - he will have abundant honey this summer. They own a Country Store in southern Indian and he sells the honey as fast as it goes on the shelf. Every spring they host The Herb Festival and bring in herbs that are not found in most nurserys (along with heritage perennials, roses, etcs.) I always bring home more herbs to add to a garden that is already too large but I can't resist. The Hyssop is gorgeous with my white David Phlox in my flower beds and the Beautiful Mint replaces Baby's Breath as a more reliable and fragrant perennial. They are also attract many butterflies.
This is not a very scientific report but if you are still interested in the number of bees I see on the herbs I will be happy to watch for the required 30 minutes.