FW: Neonictionod pesticides and the Great Sunflower Project
Cheryl Wolfe
From: Great Sunflower [mailto:sf...@sfsu.edu]
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2014 1:24 PM
Subject: Neonictionod pesticides and the Great Sunflower Project
Dear 'kuhlwolf',
I wanted to give you an update on our work and encourage you to start thinking about participating this year! We have been analyzing the data that you have collected these past few years and have some very important results. Most significantly, we believe that we are picking up the signal of neonictinoid pesticide use and can show that the bees per hour in backyards that are near areas where there is a lot of spraying of neonictinoid pesticides are much lower than areas where there is little neonictinoid use. We are about to submit a paper with these results to one of the premier scientific journals for peer review. One limitation on our data is that we do not have enough people in some of the areas these pesticides are used participating. The more yards we have data from, the better we will be able to understand what is happening. Please consider planting Lemon queen sunflowers this year and contributing data. For this work, we think it is critical that everyone plant the same variety of sunflower and try to submit at least 3 different counts. Each count only needs to be 5 minutes but having more than one count will help us minimize day to day variation. If you only get one done, we will still be glad to have the data. Please log into your account and let us know if you can participate this year by clicking one of these links.
To answer yes: https://www.greatsunflower.org/poll_answer/1092620/yes
To answer no: https://www.greatsunflower.org/poll_answer/1092620/no
We have started to generate maps of where these pesticides have been used. While use varies from year to year, we would really like to get more data from these regions. As we analyze more and more data, we will continue to update these maps.
As soon as we get the paper accepted for publication, I will share it. We also will have some new programs coming online this year and I’ll be in touch soon about those. Come see us what is happening.
Bee well,
Gretchen
Queen Bee