Citizen Science – Sunflowers for bees

I introduced readers of The Brookings Beacon in March to Citizen Science by telling one family’s story of participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count. That “one family” is my wife Mary Lou and me. We’re repeating another citsci project called the Great Sunflower Project. We’ve planted Lemon Queen variety sunflowers so that we can count pollinators that visit the sunflowers in August. Yes, neighbors will gawk as we sit watching our Lemon Queens later this summer.

Citsci means non-scientist volunteers making observations and measurements of natural resources in their yard and garden, or in a nearby field, forest, lake or stream. The data are sent to real scientists who are studying largescale trends in the natural world. Watch citsci in action on the PBS series titled Nature: American Spring LIVE. We have participated in some of the featured projects on PBS, including The Great Sunflower Project.

We’ve been citizen scientists for 20 years. We only give our $0.02 about projects from our own experience, and we like the Great Sunflower Project. There are hundreds of thousands of us citsci folks! And, there are hundreds of citsci projects. A website called Scistarter is the go-to place to find a project you’ll like, and you’ll find connections to your hunting, fishing, gardening, and bird watching hobbies. Heads-up – citsci is fun and educational, and our individual citsci data are actually helping improve knowledge about natural resources.

There are great personal benefits also. I have been walking through my yard with only a superficial appreciation and understanding of it. When I really focus on the house finch, or the maple tree flower, or a sunflower, I gain a fresh comprehension of their ecology and connection to humans – our economy and our stewardship responsibilities.

About the Great Sunflower Project — it’s more about bees and other pollinators than sunflowers. Some 100,000 bee-counters across the Nation plant the same sunflower (Lemon Queen) and then count the pollinators that visit the flowers.

Why count pollinators? The project’s website has this: “Where did the ingredients for your lunch and dinner come from? One of every three bites you took probably came from a plant pollinated by wild pollinators. The value of pollination services from wild pollinators in the U.S. alone is estimated at six billion dollars per year.”

After you registered on the sunflower project website (https://www. greatsunflower.org/), you will receive a password for your account where your data will be stored. You will enter information about your garden (e.g., slope, size, location, gardening practices), and see information on how to identify pollinators (e.g., bumble, green, honey, and unknown bees), wasps, and flies. There are identification cards to help you, and suggestions for teachers in science and art classrooms.

The website gives pollinator gardening advice. We answered several questions about our garden and received a grade of 166 out of a possible 210, and got recommendations for improving our score. Be sure to click on the “explore” tab to see maps showing a summary of pollinator services across the nation. They need more data from the central states for statistical reasons.

Participation in a citsci project improves public understanding of the scientific process, which is much needed these days. As a citsci participant, you get a sense of the ethical requirements of science. One of the first principles is standardizing procedures. The sunflower project requires one type of sunflower – Lemon Queens. We’ve always been able to find Lemon Queens at Brookings stores.

Well, that’s it for our citsci report – the Lemon Queen seeds are in the ground. What will we find in August? The website stores our past reports, which show that in 2024 we recorded visits to 20 Lemon Queen sunflower heads. In one 15-minute session, we saw a bird, a butterfly, and numerous bumble bees, honey bees, beetles, and unidentified flies, bees and wasps. Even the “unknowns” are important because they are doing the pollinator work.

Exactly what are the pollinators doing – let’s talk bees. The bee population is made up of domesticated honey bees and many species of wild bees. They are working for themselves by drinking nectar and collecting pollen to be stored in the hive. They are working for us by spreading pollen from flower to flower – helping the plants with, well…. pollination is fertilization.

Bees have specialized hairs that hold pollen. The pollen collection is helped by an electrostatic charge: as bees fly, they build up a charge, and when they enter a flower, pollen can cling to them much like a balloon can stick to hair. Amazing critters!

It’s not too late for you to get involved this year. The Great Sunflower I Chuck Berry Project is called the “flagship” project because it was the first version of this nationwide pollinator survey. Today, the project has evolved to include other garden flowers, but we are staying with the Lemon Queens (except last year when the deer ate them all!).

There is a Bee-conomy. The Adee Bee Company in Bruce is our local bee keeper so I called them to chat about my sunflowers. Their hives are placed throughout South Dakota and neighboring states. I learned that they use several different strains of bees for genetic diversity and that might explain why we are seeing honey bees with different colors and sizes. An employee said: “The soybean farmers around Brookings say that their yield meter on the combine goes up when they are harvesting near the hives.” The pollinators help bean production.

Pollinators are also important to our native prairie grasses and flowers. Entomologists at SDSU have studied the grass-flower-pollinator web, and have new information on wild bees of South Dakota, particularly the 29 species of bumble bees. We see a lot of bumble bees and yes, there is a variety of sizes and colors.

Pollination is key to successful prairie grassland restoration. For example, the Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service use seed mixes containing dozens of native plant species to support pollinators and wildlife. However, Emily Dickenson didn’t have any citsci data or university studies when she wrote:

To make a prairie It takes a clover and a bee

And reverie.

The reverie alone will do.

If bees are few.