Counting sheep might put you to sleep, but counting bees is exciting work, say the ecologists organizing a nationwide citizen science project to survey the nation's bees.

More than 65,000 Americans have signed up to plant sunflowers and watch the bees that come to them as part of the Great Sunflower Project, which was masterminded by San Francisco State University biologist Gretchen LeBeun.

Over the last month, participants in the project received a packet of Queen Lemon sunflower seeds from LeBeun, and the first bee sightings are beginning to trickle in from around the country.

"What you do is you stand out there and you time how long it takes for five bees to visit," LeBeun said, up to thirty minutes.

Then watchers report their results on the website or by mail. Soon participants will be able to upload time-stamped digital photographs to vouch for their observations.

The data the citizen scientists gather could help LeBeun and other bee researchers put a value on the service that little bees provide for humanity. It's the beekeeping world's worst-kept secret that bees have been dying in record numbers from colony collapse disorder. Last week, the Apiary Inspectors of America reported that in their latest audit, 29 percent of beekeepers suffered some bee deaths from the still mysterious problem.

The problem with falling honey bee numbers is there are fewer pollinators out there ensuring that plants bear fruit. That could be a big problem for agriculture, but the relationship between colony collapse disorder and actual pollination levels still needs clarification.

"There has been a lot of data on how many bees have been lost, but there hasn't been any data out there on what effect there has been on pollination," LeBeun said. "We could learn something interesting about whether colony collapse is having an effect on pollinator service."

Native bee species do a lot of pollinating too, and it's possible they could pick up at least some of the slack in the wake of colony collapse disorder.

"There have been some studies that show that where you don't have honey bees, if you have enough habitat for regular bees, they are able to provide full pollinator service for some crops," she said.

The number of native bee species is large and they continue to survive and even thrive in the densest urban areas. The Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City runs a Great Sunflower-affiliated program called the Great Pollinator Project. They've had hundreds of people volunteer to help survey the bee population of New York — and they've found it's humming.

"Monitoring by everyday New Yorkers helps scientists understand how honey bees and the other 220-plus bee species are doing in NYC and how their populations might change in the future," said Liz Johnson, the manager of the metropolitan diversity program at the museum.

Last year should have been a banner year for LeBeun's program. She had tens of thousands of people sign up to receive sunflower seeds, but they had a tragically low germination rate. That prevented her from achieving the kind of data depth and breadth that she wanted. Still, she was able to get a sampling that covered the nation (as you can see in the map above).

This year, the seeds are sprouting normally and she expects a torrent of data to begin flowing in her direction within the next couple weeks.

See Also:

Image: flickr/DavidWatson

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter, Google Reader feed, and book site for The History of Our Future; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.