The Great Sunflower Project

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.

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!).

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.

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!

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.