Bumbly Bees & Sunflowers

I love sunflowers.  I love watching them as they grow from alien looking buds to big, beautiful yellow flowers.  I baby them as they grow….keeping the area around the roots weed free….making sure they have enough water.  Our drought has been hard on them this year but they seem to be doing alright.  Maybe not as large as last year, but doing well all the same.

This is my second year growing sunflowers.  Last year I discovered The Great Sunflower Project.  A project led by Gretchen LeBuhn, an associate professor at San Francisco State University, they are looking at bee populations.  From their site ~

What scientists had not studied on a large scale was how the wild bees were doing and what effect that has on pollination of garden plants, crops and wild plants.  In 2008, we started this project as a way to gather information about our urban, suburban and rural bee populations.  We wanted to enlist people all over the US and Canada to observe their bees and be citizen scientists. We asked them to plant sunflowers in their gardens so we could standardize study of bee activity and provide more resources for bees. Sunflowers are relatively easy to grow and are wildly attractive to bees. Since 2008, we have expanded the list of plants studied to include Bee balm, Cosmos, Rosemary, Tickseed, and Purple coneflower.  So far we’ve found that the on average our gardeners are likely to see a bee pollinate every 2.6 minutes. Surprisingly, over 20% of our gardens never saw a bee! We want to thank all of our citizen scientists for being our observers.

 It was simple….in exchange for the Lemon Queen Sunflower seeds, they ask you, the volunteers, to collect data on the bees that visit your plants.  So I found a spot, I  planted the seeds, I watched the plants grow and then I pulled up a chair and watched the bees.  Or I should say, I pulled out my camera.  🙂

Now this was the interesting part…..you see, I’m not a bug person.  At.  All.  I flee from creatures, especially when they fly.  When I painted the trim outside my house there were many times you would see me dancing in circles around my yard with a paintbrush in one hand, a paint bucket in the other as I attempted to outrun whatever flying creature was trying to get me.  I even have a little song I sing when a bee comes after me….maybe more like a mantra….’Bumbly bee, don’t sting me’.   I know, my kids think I’m a bit off too.  🙂

But I sucked it up, braved the bees buzzing around the flowers and started taking my photographs.  I was pretty pleased with my results….and I was hooked.  It was a ritual…each morning before work and each evening after work I would be found with camera in hand taking many, many photographs of my flowers and bees.  I collected my data…..posted it on the site as requested….and added my photos to their Flickr group.  Of course, there were several occasions when I had to dance away from the flowers singing my little song ~ some bees just are grouchy I suppose.

And so it begins again.  The seeds have been planted….the plants have grown….the flowers are opening.  And this morning ~ the bees came.  I didn’t have time to collect data this morning…….but I did get some photographs.