The Great Sunflower Project

Frequently Asked Questions

Whether you are watching a sunflower, tending a school garden, checking a park, or helping pollinators at home, your observations help us understand where pollinators are thriving and where they need support.

Getting started

How do I participate?

Choose a flowering plant, watch it for at least five minutes, count every pollinator that visits, and submit your observation on the Great Sunflower Project website. You can count in your yard, a school garden, a community garden, a park, or a wild area.

Do I have to be an expert?

No. Careful observations from beginners are valuable. Identify pollinators as well as you can. If you are not sure, use a broader category, such as bee, fly, butterfly, moth, wasp, beetle, or other insect.

What if no pollinators visit during my count?

Please submit the count anyway. A count with no visitors is still useful because it tells us something about pollinator activity at that place, plant, date, and time.

How often should I count?

Count as often as you can. Repeated observations from the same garden, park, or schoolyard are especially helpful because they show how pollinator activity changes through the season and from year to year.

Can children, families, classrooms, or libraries participate?

Yes. The project works well for families, schools, libraries, garden clubs, nature centers, and community groups. A short flower watch can become a simple outdoor science activity for almost any age group.

Which Great Sunflower Project program is right for me?

Ways to count

Why did the project start with sunflowers?

Sunflowers are easy to grow and are excellent resources for bees and birds. They produce nectar and pollen that attract bees, and wild sunflowers require bee visits to set seed.

Why have you expanded the project?

The initial focus of the project was on backyards. After testing our protocol, we realized that we could learn about wild areas and gather information about which plants different pollinators use by opening the project to all plants.

We also realized we were missing the opportunity to gather other useful types of data. To address that, we introduced several ways to collect observations: casual observations, stationary counts, traveling counts, and area searches.

What is a casual observation?

A casual observation involves no time, distance, or area component. Examples include a bumble bee that flies by while you are checking your mail, a carpenter bee feeding in your backyard while you wash dishes, or a sweat bee visiting flowers while you are weeding your garden.

Required: Date.

What is a stationary or single plant species count?

A stationary count is made over a known period of time without a distance or area component. Examples include watching bees at a single plant for any length of time, doing a traditional Great Sunflower Project count, or sitting in your backyard for a period of time identifying bees.

If you move from one plant to another, please consider entering your observations as a traveling count or an area count.

Required: Date, start time, and duration.

Helpful: Number of plants watched and plant species.

What is a traveling or multiple plant species count?

A traveling count is made over a known period of time while traveling a known distance. You should be able to estimate the distance you traveled during your outing.

Examples include walking a trail at a local park or walking a path through a botanic garden. If you have a reliable estimate of the area you covered, consider entering your observations as an area count. If you are not sure of the distance or area covered, please enter your observation as a casual observation.

Required: Date, start time, duration, and distance covered.

What is an area count?

An area count is made while thoroughly searching a given location or area. These counts are sometimes used by biologists when monitoring a specific site, such as a one-hectare plot, but they can also be appropriate for sampling bees if you are able to estimate the size of the area searched.

The key measure of effort is the size of your area. Secondary measures of effort are time and distance traveled. If you are unsure of the area covered but have a reliable estimate of distance, consider entering your observations as a traveling count.

Examples include actively searching a local park, woodlot, schoolyard, neighborhood, or privately owned property for bees.

Required: Date, start time, duration, and area covered.

What information should I write down before I submit a count?

At minimum, write down the date, location, plant watched, type of count, start time, duration, and the number and kinds of pollinators that visited. For traveling and area counts, also record the distance traveled or area searched.

Bees and pollinators

How do I know it is a bee and not a wasp or fly?

Flies are usually easier to recognize. Flies have one wing on each side, while bees have two. Flies also tend to perch with their wings pointing out at an angle, while bees often tuck their wings away.

Telling wasps and bees apart is harder. Bees tend to have wider, more robust bodies and are usually hairier. You can often see where bees are carrying pollen. However, bees' closest relatives are a group of wasps, and some wasps are very difficult to tell apart from bees.

The most reliable way to tell bees and wasps apart is to use a microscope and look for branched hairs. Bees have branched hairs; wasps have simple hairs. You can also watch what they eat: bees rely on pollen and nectar, while wasps are often predators or scavengers.

Are yellow jackets bees?

No. Yellow jackets are wasps. They can give bees an undeserved bad reputation.

What are those bees doing?

Female bees collect pollen to provision their nests. Pollen is the main source of protein for developing larvae. Both female and male bees drink nectar, which provides energy.

How do bees carry pollen?

Different species carry pollen in different ways. Most commonly, bees have specialized branched hairs that hold pollen. The pollen is helped by electrostatic charge: as bees fly, they build up a charge, and when they enter a flower, pollen can cling to them much like a balloon can stick to hair.

Some bees carry pollen on hairs on their hind legs, while others carry pollen on the underside of their abdomen. Other bees carry pollen in their mouths. There are also parasitic bees that do not gather their own pollen. These bees lay their eggs in the nests of other bees, and their young often kill the host larvae. They are called cuckoo bees because this behavior was first documented in cuckoo birds.

Do I need to identify pollinators to species?

No. Species-level identifications are wonderful when you can make them, but broader categories are still useful. A careful count of bees, flies, butterflies, moths, wasps, beetles, and other visitors can provide valuable information.

Gardens and plants

Can I grow any sunflower and participate?

Yes. Each sunflower has its own characteristics, and some varieties do not produce pollen, which is one of the main reasons bees visit flowers. Data from the annual variety Lemon Queen are especially useful because using the same variety helps us compare observations across many locations.

Do you send out free seeds?

We no longer send out free seeds except to school garden coordinators or Garden Leaders. Seeds can be purchased at local stores or through Renee's Garden, which will donate 25% of proceeds if you use the coupon code FR225A.

What plants can I watch and report on?

We welcome observations from as many plants as you can watch. Please try to watch for at least five minutes. We still have a set of focal plants and hope you will continue to report on Lemon Queen sunflowers.

For stationary counts, where you watch one plant, please provide the name of the plant you were watching. If you know the variety or scientific name, please include that as well. We also welcome data from wild plants.

Happy bee hunting.

What if I do not know the name of the plant?

Do the best you can. If you do not know the species, provide a common name, a broader description, or notes that will help you remember the plant later. If you can identify the plant accurately, your observation will be more useful for the Pollinator Friendly Plants program.

How can I make my garden safer for pollinators?

Provide flowers through as much of the growing season as possible, reduce or avoid pesticides, leave some nesting habitat, and include water and shelter where appropriate. Small changes in yards, school gardens, parks, and community spaces can make a difference.

Can I count pollinators in a public place?

Yes, if you can observe safely and respectfully. Parks, schoolyards, botanic gardens, community gardens, and other green spaces can all be useful places to count. Follow local rules, stay on paths where required, and avoid disturbing plants, nests, or wildlife.

Account, privacy, and team

How do I reset my password?

Please use the password reset page. Enter your username or email address, and you will be emailed instructions for creating a new password.

Type your email address carefully when you register. If it is misspelled, you may not receive important information, including password reset emails. Password reset messages are typically sent within minutes, and you should not have to wait more than half an hour. If you do not receive the email, please check your spam folder.

Where can I find data sheets and identification help?

Visit the Downloads page for data sheets and identification resources, including bee natural history cards and bee identification cards.

How do I contact you?

You can try our forums or email us at sfbee@sfsu.edu.

Who is on the Great Sunflower Project team?

The Great Sunflower Project was founded by Gretchen LeBuhn and Dave Cohen. Dave Cohen helped build the project and has since moved on.

• Gretchen LeBuhn is the founder and director of the project.
• Mark Reynolds is our conservation scientist.
• Tina Phillips from Cornell is helping us with evaluation.

Where can I read the privacy statement?

Our statement on privacy can be found at privacy.

The science

What happens to the data I submit?

Your observations help build a large community science record of pollinator activity. Counts from many people and many places help us look for patterns in where pollinators are doing well, which plants they visit, and how gardens and green spaces may support them.

Why are repeated counts from the same place useful?

Repeated counts help show how pollinator activity changes through the season and over time. A single count is useful, but a series of counts from the same place can tell a richer story about local pollinator communities.

Why do pollinators matter?

Pollinators help many flowering plants reproduce and support food production, gardens, and wild ecosystems. Bees, flies, butterflies, moths, beetles, wasps, birds, and other animals can all play roles in pollination.

Why study pollinators in cities and towns?

Many people live in urban and suburban places, and those landscapes contain yards, school gardens, parks, community gardens, street trees, and restored areas. Understanding how pollinators use these spaces can help us make better decisions about planting, habitat, and conservation.

The science behind the Great Sunflower Project

As you sit at the table today, do you know where the water you are drinking came from? In San Francisco, much of the drinking water comes from the Sierra. How about the last prescription medicine you took? It probably originated from a natural source. Of the top 150 prescription drugs used in the United States, many originate from natural sources, including plants, fungi, bacteria, and animals. And where did the ingredients for your lunch and dinner come from? About one of every three bites probably came from a plant pollinated by animals.

These are only a few examples of the services provided by healthy natural ecosystems. Economists and ecologists have worked together to place a financial value on the contribution of natural ecosystems to human well-being. The estimates are eye-opening. Pollination services from wild pollinators in the United States alone are valued in the billions of dollars each year. While these ecosystem services are often produced for free, replacing them would be enormously expensive. Unless human activities are carefully planned and managed, valuable ecosystems will continue to be impaired or destroyed.

To maintain biodiversity and meet the increasing demand for ecosystem services, conservation science must include cities. Cities are important for conservation because many people live in urban areas, and urban landscapes are where many ecosystem services, such as environmental quality of life, are delivered. As urban populations grow, we need to understand how to maintain habitat in cities and how to give urban residents access to nature.

We know that pollinators are declining in some wild and agricultural landscapes, but less is known about urban pollinators. Our data on bumble bees in urban settings suggest that urban bees may also be declining. While the loss of pollinators is important, it is equally important to understand how those losses affect pollination services.

We still have much to learn about how healthy bee populations are maintained in urban environments. Because natural habitats are uncommon in cities, they may not provide enough resources to support viable pollinator communities. However, if gardens, restored areas, and other green spaces are sufficiently connected to natural habitat, native pollinator populations may thrive.

By tracking and valuing the goods and services provided by natural ecosystems, we can help build a future in which conservation is not a luxury but a guiding principle for daily decision-making. The data you collect are a start. They provide insight into how green spaces in urban, suburban, and rural landscapes are connected and how we can help pollinators. The Great Sunflower Project is one step toward that future.

Still have questions? Try our forums or email us at sfbee@sfsu.edu.