6/13 KPLU
The great bee count
By KPLU News Staff
For a number of years, honey bee populations have been shrinking. It’s called colony collapse disorder. To help understand this bee die-off, citizen scientists are being asked to keep an eye on their gardens this summer as part of The Great Sunflower Project .
The California-based project is helping scientists map pollinators around the country, including in Washington state. Steve Sheppard, a bee researcher at Washington State University, says there are so many insects and so few entomologists that for many parts of the country there’s not even baseline information about what is there.