Farewell and Best Wishes
As this research project is now in the final stages of wrapping-up, we wish to thank everyone who participated in this inquiry; the students, mentors, teachers and others behind the scenes. We appreciate all of your efforts and contributions to this online learning community.

Scientific exploration is a process of discovery that can be fun! There are many unanswered questions about plants just waiting for new scientists to consider, investigate, and share.

Please come back and visit the PlantingScience Project Gallery anytime to view this project in the future. You can search the Gallery by key word, team name, topic, or school name.

Good bye for now.
Warm regards,
The PlantingScience team

Good presentation, Olivia.  In answer to one of your questions in the presentation: Generally, a plant cannot be over-pollinated.  The plant has multiple ways to stop bad pollen from fertilizing the ovules.  You can look up "pollen competition" to see some diagrams.  I did a research project on pollen competition in wild tomato plants when I was getting my bachelor's degree.  To view the pollen tubes, I stained them with a dye that glowed under florescent light.

Well done!  I like the revised graph you put in your presentation.  Good job labelling the axes.  I also like how you mention the potential additional pollinators but don't include them in the graph because you didn't actually observe them.  Good job separating fact from conjecture in your presentation.

As you are enjoying your holidays, maybe think of all the foods you are eating that require pollinators.  Pollinators need pollen and nectar throughout the growing season, but many food crops only produce pollen during a specific time (late spring for apples, summer for watermelons).  People can help bees by planting bee-friendly gardens with plants that bloom throughout the growing season.  This gives the bees something to eat when the food crops aren't flowering.  It also gives the bees a bigger habitat.  Check out this website hosted by the University of Illinois: https://beespotter.org/

I hope the rest of your semester goes smoothly.  Keep asking questions!

Looks like you are in the final stages of your projects.
It’s great to see that teams from your school are wrapping up and posting conclusions. Enjoy the final stages of your project, and feel free to post any final comments or questions you have for your mentors.

Thank you for helping us with our project! The presentations we uploaded are our final projects.

We'd also like to thank you for helping us with our project, and encouraging us to keep asking questions.  Thank you for being proactive, and providing us with support during our project.  

We wish you the best!

-Daphine, James, Olivia

I feel good about our results I think it would have helped if the weather was warmer, but our projects are now over. We are attaching our final project, (we all have different ones).

Yay, a graph!  (Sorry, I was sick last week.)

Your legend does a pretty good job explaining what the graph is showing, but you still need x-axis and y-axis labels.  Also, is it showing the total number of pollinators you saw over the whole experiment, or is it showing an average?

How do you feel about your results?

Thanks for the pictures!

It's great that you are seeing seed set.  Keep track of that because, if you don't actually see pollinators, you could analyze seed set as your dependent variable.  More seeds/fruit means more visits from pollinators. 

You're right that pollinators prefer sunny, calm conditions.  They may be coming out during brief times when the wind dies down.

We talked before about the definition of the independent variable, which for your experiment is the distance from the hive.  You also have the dependent variable - the thing you are measuring like pollinator visits or seed set.  In addition to these two variables, you have all the other things that can affect the dependent variable.  You've talked about sunlight, wind, and temperature.  Now, if these things are all the same between your two treatments, they should affect both plants equally.  So, if both plants are experiencing the same amount of sunlight, wind, and cold, none of these things could explain why one plant has more seeds than another.  Based on your observations, is one plant experiencing different conditions that could result in more or fewer pollinators?

Something scientists do before setting up a project is create a "hypothesis graph."  This is just like a hypothesis, just as a graph instead of words.  I have found it a really useful thing to do because it is then really easy to compare my hypothesis graph to my results graph to see whether the data supports my hypothesis.  You already have a hypothesis - that the flowers closer to the beehive will have more pollinators.  How would you show this in a graph?  You'll want your dependent variable on the Y-axis and your independent variable on the X-axis.  See if you can draw one in your notebook and take a picture of it.

This is a photo of the flowers that are around 3 feet from the beehive that is at my house.

This photo shows that although we have not been able to see pollinators within a set amount of time, pollinators are coming and pollinating the plants.

This photo shows that although we have not been able to see pollinators within a set amount of time, pollinators are coming and pollinating the plants.

Another thing to add is that although it was sunny, all of the plants (that our class is using) are located in the shade.  Will this contribute to the lack of bees?  The weather has been very cold, and when the wind blows, its fluctuates between a big gust of wind or a small gust of wind.  But the wind is powerful to an extent, as sometimes we will come back the day after to see plants that have been turned upside down by the wind.

We noticed that during our trials, it was very windy, and that the wind was blowing to the left of the flowers.

The temperature does affect pollinators a bit, but wind and rain affect them more.  What other notes did you take about the weather?  Was it sunny or cloudy?  How would you describe the wind?  What direction was the wind blowing?