Dear Team Bee,
I hope your spring is glorious! We have a couple goals for this year. First, we are going to try to get everyone to plant a Lemon Queen sunflower and do a couple counts. There are some worrisome low counts appearing in California from last year and it would help to know if this was just an odd year or a trend that we need to be concerned about. You can help by contributing data from your gardens. The Lemon queen data set is the best one for looking at trends over time because we know that all the plants are the same so, bees should be equally attracted no matter where the plant is found. Second, you will notice some improvements to the website this year and in the weeks to come. Anthony Hall is our new website guru and he's working to spiff things up. I'll send out a survey in the next month or so to ask what improvements you would like to see. And, finally please watch PBS Nature's American Spring Live on the 29th and 30th of April and the 1st of May. They are featuring the Great Sunflower Project! We are especially proud that they came to see how we implement citizen science into the curriculum at Peralta Elementary School in Oakland, California. I've been committed to working with the teachers at Peralta for the last eight years and you won't believe the magic that has happened there.
We have some seeds from last year's mailing so, if you need a packet and don't mind year old seed, you can give us your mailing address and we'll get them sent out.
Bee Well!
Gretchen