The Bee-a-thon and The Great Bee Count

Learn more about The Bee Count and how you can become part of the Citizen Science Project at the free online Bee-a-thon event scheduled for Saturday, July 16, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. PST. Join bee experts, beekeepers, and environmental experts as they give us the latest buzz on what's happening with the bees. You can log onto the event at www.yourgardenshow.com and you can also follow the Bee-a-thon on Twitter (#iseebees) and Facebook.

The Bee-a-thon kicks off the Great Bee Count, a Citizen Science campaign hosted on YourGardenShow.com in partnership with the Great Sunflower Project. They are counting bees across North America and helping shape bee conservation efforts.

Why should you care about the bees? Because the pollinators are responsible for every three bites of food and are facing challenges from colony collapse disorder and other threats. Tune in to the Bee-a-thon and get inspired to count some bees!

The Great Sunflower Project

This month's issue of Sunset magazine got me thinking about The Great Sunflower Project again. There's an article about Gretchen LeBuhn, the Bay Area biologist, who started The Great Sunflower Project to raise awareness about the decline of honey bees.

She began the project last year by creating a Web site where people could sign-up and order sunflower seeds to plant. The project has grown to over 55,000 participants. It doesn't require any knowledge about bees in order to participate. Although they are out of seeds for 2009, there are sources listed where you can buy the Lemon Queen annual sunflower seeds and you can sign-up for 2010.

This is a wonderful project to get young children involved in so that they can begin to make the connection between pollinators and the food that they eat. I am still waiting for my Lemon Queen sunflowers to bloom, so hopefully I will have something to report in a few weeks.

These pictures were taken at a sunflower field in Winters, California this past weekend and I am happy to report that for every sunflower I saw there were at least 2 to 3 honey bees. And there were sunflowers as far as my eyes could see.