GRETCHEN LeBUHN WANTS to save the nation's bees — one sunflower at a time. And she's hoping you'll help.
LeBuhn, a Corte Madera resident and associate professor of biology at San Francisco State University, is the creator of the Great Sunflower Project, an effort to enlist "citizen scientists" in taking stock of the status of wild bees.
"We want to identify areas where bees are doing well, and ones where they are doing poorly," LeBuhn said. "And once we have enough data, we want to be able to say: If you want a healthy bee community, here are things you can do in your own backyard."
Her plan, available online at www.greatsunflower.org, is a simple one. Participants agree to plant and care for "lemon queen" sunflowers. They also agree to spend about 15 minutes every two weeks counting the number of bees that visit their sunflowers.
"It's an ingenious way of recording what the density of pollinators is," said San Anselmo beekeeper Mea Draper. "We talk about honeybees because they're so closely associated with our food, but native bee populations are down too, probably proportionately — but we just don't have the adequate figures to document that."
The project hopes to draw many new participants during Saturday's "Great Bee Count," organized by LeBuhn.
"It's a targeted day to get the whole country to participate," LeBuhn said, noting that interested bee watchers can sign up at the Great Sunflower Project's website. "You get up, have your coffee, go outside at around 10 a.m. — when the fog's burned off — watch your sunflower for 15 minutes and enter the data online."
LeBuhn hopes the results of the "Great Bee Count," and the sunflower project in general, will help bee researchers understand how native bee populations are surviving in urban, suburban and rural areas. She also hopes the project, which she began in 2008, will provide some clues as to what human activities can be helpful to wild pollinators.
Many researchers have reported a drastic decline in the populations of domesticated honeybees since 2006, due in part to a phenomenon called "colony collapse disorder." Researchers have also noted a similar decline in the populations of wild bees.
"Of the nine species of bumblebees historically known to live in San Francisco, we were only able to find four of them" in a recent study, LeBuhn said. "We happen to know that two of those bee species have been seen in Marin County, so they're not extinct — but they've disappeared from San Francisco."
Yet few studies have examined how those plant populations that depend on wild bees for pollination have responded to that decline — even though the value of wild pollinators in the U.S. is estimated at $4 billion to $6 billion per year.
Having studied bees and other pollinators in the northern Sierra Nevada mountains, San Francisco city parks and the Ecuadoran Andes, LeBuhn began the study that would lead to the sunflower project in the vineyards of Napa and Sonoma counties.
"Our first idea was to send a grad student to plant sunflowers in Napa and Sonoma, and then look at the (bee) visitation rates," LeBuhn said. "And then our next thought was, hey, the vineyard community has been so helpful and so generous letting us use their property — why don't we just call those guys and ask if they would like to help collect the data? Then we don't have to pay a grad student to go out there each time.
"And from there," LeBuhn said, "we thought, 'maybe other people would be interested in finding out what's happening with the bee community in their own backyards.'"
Just how many people were interested surprised even LeBuhn. Within three weeks of setting up a website for the Great Sunflower Project, more than 15,000 people had agreed to observe their backyard bees. Today, more than 100,000 people throughout the U.S. and Canada are taking part.
"During the first year, I mailed sunflower seeds to anyone who wanted to participate," LeBuhn said. "Once we had 25,000 to 30,000 people participating, however ... I asked people to buy their own seeds."
LeBuhn chose the "lemon queen" sunflower variety because it provides nectar and pollen in equal supply.
"Some bees harvest lots of nectar, and some want lots of pollen," LeBuhn said. "Some sunflowers are bred not to have pollen. If you grew those, and you weren't getting any bees, you might think you had a bad yard."
According to LeBuhn, the average participant in the sunflower project sees an average 2.6 bees every 15 minutes. However, 20 percent of project participants never saw a single bee — a statistic LeBuhn finds alarming.
Participants don't need to know whether the bee they're watching is a bumblebee, a honeybee or a carpenter bee, though they can use the handy bee guide at the sunflower project's website to find out. In fact, LeBuhn and others hope that everyone who takes part in the project will end up learning a little more about the creatures who call their gardens home.
"This is getting individuals and the public to look at bees, and not only to realize what bees are coming to forage on their plants, but to watch the way they forage — to see their little proboscises going in and out, and their hairs picking up the pollen," Draper said. "Those are the kinds of little details that can make a person conscious about what interactions take place in nature, and begin to think about how to improve the environment for those creatures."
Those who want to do more to help their local bees might consider planting blue, yellow or white flowers, LeBuhn said. A more complete list of bee-friendly plants is available at http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens/gbt.html.
"Bees see in the ultraviolet, so they like blues and yellows, not reds," LeBuhn said. "And one of the best things people can do is to make sure they have flowers for as long as there might be bees — which in California is generally from February through October. They should also be careful with pesticide use, and try to have some bare ground, where there isn't mulch or grass. That provides nesting resources for bees."
Contact Rob Rogers via email at email@example.com
all about bees
Sign up for Saturday's "Great Bee Count" at www.greatsunflower.org.
Bee lovers can sponsor participants in the Marin Pollen Project. Those participants, members of the Marin County Beekeepers, will assess the potential affect of pesticides on hives by collecting samples from February through October of 2012. Visit www.marinpollen.org.
Learn about caring for bees at the seminar "Beekeeping for Beginners" at 9:30 a.m. July 23 at the Marin Art & Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., in Ross.