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<h1><b>Volunteers to count bees on sunflowers in study</b></h1>Ron
Sullivan, Joe Eaton<br><br>
Wednesday, April 2, 2008<br>
<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2008/04/02/HODSVR2AC.DTL&o=0&type=printable">
<img src="cid:7.1.0.9.0.20080403114218.01cd6f68@xerces.org.1" width=64 height=64 alt="Great Sunflower Project participants will use a certain t...">
</a><br><br>
Here's another opportunity to do your bit for science without leaving
your yard. <br><br>
San Francisco State University biologist Gretchen LeBuhn wants you to
grow a sunflower - not just any old sunflower, but the North American
native species Helianthus annuus - and monitor the bee traffic once it
blooms. It's called the Great Sunflower Project, and with it LeBuhn hopes
to connect the ecosystem services of bees with issues of food
security.<br><br>
LeBuhn started out as a botanist but became fascinated with bees. When
teaching a bee-identification course at the Southwest Research Center in
Arizona, she realized how little most people know about this diverse
(1,500 species exist in California, 500 in the Bay Area) and ecologically
vital group. <br>
<b>Honeybees are declining<br><br>
</b>"There's very good data that honeybees seem to be declining, and
spotty data that native bees aren't doing well," she said. Several
researchers, including Gordon Frankie at UC Berkeley, have been studying
urban bee communities. But no one had attempted a continentwide survey of
the state of the bees.<br><br>
LeBuhn, who provides the seeds, wants Great Sunflower Project
participants to use a specific kind of sunflower so their observations
can be standardized. H. annuus is "a classic bee plant." Its
long blooming season - potentially May to September - should attract a
broad range of native bees that fly at different times of the year.
<br><br>
"Sunflowers are easy to grow, easy to watch bees on, and bees love
them," she added. Schools, including San Francisco's Willie Brown
Academy, and community gardens will have their own patches.<br><br>
Bee watchers will be asked to spend half an hour - early in the day,
before the pollen is depleted - on two Saturdays each month taking note
of what kinds of bees visit their sunflowers and how long it takes for
the first five to arrive. The identification part has been field-tested.
<br><br>
"We're comfortable that people can identify bumblebees," LeBuhn
said, "and honeybees possibly." Other possibilities are large,
solitary, shiny black carpenter bees and green "metallic" bees.
Reporting "just bees" is fine, though. The time the bees spend
at the sunflowers indicates how much pollination service the flower is
getting. <br><br>
That's where the food-security connection comes in.<br><br>
"Worldwide, community gardens provide up to 15 to 20 percent of
food," explains LeBuhn. "For the urban poor in some countries,
60 to 80 percent of their food is what they raise. It's often the only
material contribution women can make to the household economy. I'm
interested in whether community gardens are getting enough pollinator
services in urban settings." <br><br>
Although it may not be the norm in the Bay Area, she said, community
gardens in other countries can have high pesticide use - and beneficial
insects like bees are not immune to pesticides. If funding is available,
she'd like to take the Great Sunflower Project international.<br>
<b>Population problems<br><br>
</b>Honeybees beset by the mysterious colony collapse disorder have been
in the headlines, but LeBuhn notes that some of North America's
bumblebees are also in trouble. UC Davis Professor Emeritus Robbin Thorp
said at least one species, the Franklin's bumblebee (Bombus franklini) of
Northern California and southern Oregon, may already be extinct.<br><br>
Thorp spends his summers searching for B. franklini in its narrow zone of
distribution between the Coast Range and the Cascades-Sierra. Last year,
he found none; in 2006, a single worker at Mount Ashland in Oregon.
Franklin's bumblebee is a generalist, gathering pollen from lupines and
poppies and nectaring at mints. The plants are still there, but the bee
has gone missing before it could be listed as endangered.<br><br>
"The western bumblebee, a close relative of Franklin's, was once
common from Monterey County to southern British Columbia," Thorp
said. "They are virtually undetectable in those areas now."
Some eastern bumblebees are also declining.<br>
<b>Victims of success?<br><br>
</b>North American bumblebees may be victims of their success as
pollinators; for certain crops, they're better than honeybees. The
bumblebee's secret is the ability to vibrate its body by using its wing
muscles, causing pollen release through pores in a flower's stamens.
<br><br>
"Buzz pollination" is crucial for hothouse tomatoes and
peppers. Cranberries, strawberries and blueberries are also
bumblebee-pollinated - all told, said Thorp, 15 percent of our food
crops, valued at $3 billion.<br><br>
Unlike honeybees' hives, bumblebee colonies die off annually, leaving
newly mated queens to overwinter and start the cycle again in spring. The
bumblebee trade has gone global, with North American queens shipped to
Europe to rear colonies. "When the colonies were shipped back to us,
I suspect they may have picked up diseases from European
bumblebees," Thorp said. The main suspect is the microorganism
nosema, present in commercial Western bumblebee stocks since
1998.<br><br>
It's sobering to realize just how dependent we all are on pollinating
insects, native and otherwise. LeBuhn's Great Sunflower Project might
start to fill large gaps in our knowledge of what Edward O. Wilson calls
"the little things that run the world."<br>
<b>Resources: <br><br>
</b>-- The Great Sunflower Project:
<a href="http://www.greatsunflower.org"><i>www.greatsunflower.org</a></i>
. Includes a bee identification guide, to be published soon in book
form.<br><br>
-- Urban Bee Gardens:
<a href="http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens"><i>
nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens</a></i>. Gordon Frankie's
site.<br><br>
-- Xerces Society Red List of Pollinator Insects:
<a href="http://links.sfgate.com/ZCWD"><i>links.sfgate.com/ZCWD</a></i>.
The Xerces Society supports conservation of insects and other
invertebrates. Its Red List identifies pollinators at risk.<br><br>
-- "The Forgotten Pollinators" by Stephen L. Buchmann and Gary
Paul Nabhan (Island Press; 1996; $30, paperback).<br><br>
<i>Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan are freelance nature and garden writers in
Berkeley. E-mail them at
<a href="mailto:home@sfchronicle.com">home@sfchronicle.com</a>.</i>
<br><br>
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<a href="http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/02/HODSVR2AC.DTL" eudora="autourl">
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/02/HODSVR2AC.DTL<br>
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</a>This article appeared on page <b>G - 8</b> of the San Francisco
Chronicle<br>
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*************************<br>
Scott Hoffman Black<br>
Ecologist/Entomologist<br>
Executive Director<br>
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation<br>
4828 SE Hawthorne <br>
Portland, OR 97215 <br>
Direct line (503) 449-3792<br>
sblack@xerces.org<br><br>
<i>The Xerces Society is an international, nonprofit organization that
protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their
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