Saturday, May 9, 2009

Great Sunflower Project


My dad was a beekeeper, so I have a fondness for bees. I've always thought it was a shame that they are highly misunderstood and feared for being such gentle, industrious creatures.

Bees are highly important to our ecosystem and they are frequently threatened by sicknesses and pests in their hives and also more aggressive varieties of bees. It's urgent and important that we all become educated about the value bees add to our world and how much trouble we'd be in without them.

I ran across this wonderful project called The Great Sunflower Project. The goal of the project is to gather data on bees that might be helpful to scientists and environmentalists. They will send out free seeds to anyone who wants to participate in the project. All you need to do is sign up, plant a particular type of sunflower and, once per week, track how long it takes five bees to find your flower. Simple and fun!

Do you think you can help? Head on over and check it out if you think you can spare a little time. Who knows what your bee-tracking will do for the world. Count a bee, save a species!

(Incidentally, this is a GREAT project to do with kids!)

[photo credit: thai jasmine]

4 comments:

Carolyn R. Parsons said...

Thank you for this..you have no idea how excited we are to be a part of this project as a family

Breeze!

Debbie Diesen said...

What a neat thing. And you're right, it sounds like a great kid-friendly project for the summer. I'm off to take a look at their site. Thanks for blogging about it.

Anonymous said...

What an amazing idea, thanks! I'm definitely going to check it out. (I love sunflowers, and bees!)

Juno Mom said...

I saw this in a magazine and we signed up. I'm waiting for my sunflowers to grow so that we can start counting. This is a great blog site!