[ExI] bees again

[spike]

>...  The theory certainly seems plausible to me.  ...  Everyone here has a
chance to play amateur scientist in the next couple months as the blossoms
of spring come forth in all their refulgent beauty...spike

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So here is what happened.  The Great Sunflower Project proposed a standard,
but things didn't work as well as we had hoped.  Eventually a group formed
which was a spinoff: several of us were attempting informal
half-digit-of-precision estimates on local blossom patches or trees, then a
data repository was created by one of our number, who set up a private email
group.  In December, we get a short note from QueenB telling us she would be
gone for some indeterminate length of time due to a personal tragedy.  We
haven't heard from her since.  She has the mailing list.

Explanation of half-digit-precision estimates: if you only needed to
estimate an order of magnitude, that would be zero digits of precision.  If
your estimates were better than that, but still not one-digit-precision,
there is half a digit.  If you can sit under an index tree and tell the
difference between 1 bee, 3 bees, 10, 30, 100, 300, 1000 and so forth, then
that is 10 log to the nearest half.

Question amateur scientists: can you estimate the number of bees to the
nearest half digit?  I think you can.  If you want to play, find some index
trees, go out on a specific date and estimate.  Then if you are so inclined,
send me the count and the location.  A zip code is good enough.  If you have
a tree in which there are several of the same species in the area you can
use for comparison, that is even better.

spike