Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:30:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Pickering
To: dkrusac@fs.fed.us, jnewell@spsu.edu, Michael Mueller mmueller@uga.edu, Nancy Lowe nancy@www.discoverlife.org, kgarland@gaconservancy.org, Jennifer.mccoy@cobbcounty.org
Cc: sdroege@usgs.gov, jel27@cornell.edu, rrs7@cornell.edu, lebuhn@sfsu.edu, Laxmid9@uga.edu, ascher@amnh.org, Discover Life dl@www.discoverlife.org, John Pickering pick@www.discoverlife.org
Subject: Bee Hunt!, Earth Day, & Safety

Dennis, Jennifer, Julie, Karen, Mike, & Nancy,

Thanks for your participation in the Bee Hunt! meeting yesterday. Special thanks to Julie and Southern Polytechnic State University for hosting it, and, to Nancy for organizing it and providing breakfast. Please consider yourselves the founding members of the organizing committee for Bee Hunt! in Georgia. Please recruit others as you see fit. The URL to give people is http://www.discoverlife.org/bee .

As a goal, let's try to get 1,000 teachers in Georgia to commit to participate on Earth Day, 2010, or later in April, if bad weather or other factors intervene on 22 April.

Assuming we can do it without diluting Bee Hunt!, in addition to pollinators and flowers, we should encourage students to take photographs of ladybugs, caterpillars, and some other taxa too. This will make it easier for teachers with young children to participate. Mike, with the students in your curriculum development class, let's discuss what's required and what's optional within our research protocols at different grade levels. Some taxa are much easier than others to photograph -- and don't sting, bite, or poison. Mushrooms don't blow around in the wind, don't run away, and hence, are easy to photograph. But let's make sure nobody eats them. (Express mail all suspected chantrelles to ... for confirmation of identity by our expert mushroom eaters!)

As a priority, let's make sure that we cover all aspects of safety pronto. Sam Droege may already have material that we can use. Possibly, Nancy and Karen, as recent victims of poison ivy, could do something on "Why fear and loathing of poison ivy, ticks, and other nature nasties should not stop you from having fun exploring the woods -- what you need to know to enjoy and be safe outdoors." With a little training and common sense, I'm sure children are safer running around in the woods than crossing a mall parking lot. Once we have a script, Jordan can make a safety video.

I very much like Mike's idea of getting an IRB application in so that we can work with human subjects. Signing a consent form will commit teachers more to actually doing Bee Hunt! and will allow us to get some papers out, assuming we're successful.

I'm copying this to John Losey and Rebecca Rice Smyth of the, Lost Ladybug Project, and Gretchen LeBuhn, Great Sunflower Project, so that we can closely coordinate our efforts with theirs.