With your camera!
If you're into pollinators, plants and photography, and want to share your work nationally, here's a new project for you.
To generate some buzz for pollinators, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) is partnering with the Wild Bee Gardens app to sponsor a national photography contest.
Bay Area native bee enthusiast Celeste Ets-Hokin, who launched the Wild Bee Gardens app (with identification assistance from consultants, including native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis), alerted us to the contest.
It is "designed to raise awareness about the dazzling diversity of North America's native bees and other pollinators," she said, "and to engage residents from coast to coast in the vital and rewarding business of creating a continental tapestry of wild bee gardens,"
??The winning photographs will be published in the Wild Bee Gardens app, and also promoted on the CFS website, Facebook and Twitter pages.
CFS, headquartered in Washington, D.C., with branch offices in San Francisco, Honolulu and Portland (Ore.) describes itself as "a national non-profit public interest and environmental advocacy organization working to protect human health and the environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies and by promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture. CFS also educates consumers concerning the definition of organic food and products."
Judges will choose numerous winners, and each will receive a free Wild Bee Gardens app to keep, or give as a gift, "so that you can share your enthusiasm for wild bees and their gardens with your friends and families," Ets-Hokin said. Winners also will receive a pollinator swag bag from CFS. ?
Want to learn more about the submission guidelines and selection criteria? Access http://centerforfoodsafety-wildbees.tumblr.com??. The deadline to submit photos is April 17.
If you can't identify the pollinator, not to worry. After the judges select the winners, Thorp will identify the bees. He's a co-author of California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday), along with colleagues Gordon Frankie, Rollin Coville and Barbara Ertter. Thorp also co-authored Bumble Bees of North America: an Identification Guide (Princeton University Press).
Speaking of bumble bees, they seem to be quite scarce this year. We saw our first black-tailed bumble bee (Bombus melanopygus) of the season on March 15 on Spanish lavender in Vacaville.
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