"Just call it a "Day of Insect Art!"

Sunday afternoon, Jan. 21 promises to be a day of inspiration, creativity and delight when the Bohart Museum of Entomology hosts an open house, "Bug-Art@The Bohart" from 1 to 4 p.m. in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, Crocker Lane.

On the other side of campus, the Design Museum exhibition, It's Bugged: Insects' Role in Design will be open from 2 to 4 p.m. in Room 124 of Cruess Hall, off California Avenue.  

At the Bohart, UC Davis undergradauate student and artist Karissa Merritt will be on-hand sketching insects for all to see, said Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator.  Other activities/focal points at the open house:

• Art display from the collection of the late Mary Foley Bensen, a former Smithsonian Institution scientific illustrator who lived the last years of her life in Davis, and who worked for entomology faculty
• Art display from Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and professor of entomology, who illustrated under her maiden name Lynn Siri
• Art display by Charlotte Herbert, Ph.D. student; and UC Davis alumnus Ivana Li and Nicole Tam, who hold degrees in entomology from UC Davis
• Exhibit of "insect wedding photography" by Bohart associates Greg Kareofelas and Kathy Keatley Garvey

Visitors are also invited to pick up a colored pencil and paper and sketch an insect, said Yang. For those not artistically inclined, images of dragonflies from a  coloring book by dragonfly expert/author Kathy Claypole Biggs and illustrator Tim Manolis, will be available for people of all ages to color.

Open house attendees are invited to wear insect-themed attire, including dresses, ties, and jewelry. A contest will take place at 3 p.m. for the best insect-themed outfit, and for the best insect-themed tattoo (tattoo must be in a family friendly location).

Entomologist Jeff Smith, who curates the butterfly and moth collection at the Bohart and is newly returned from a collecting trip to Belize, will be on hand to show the Bohart collection.

At the Design Museum, among the work that visitors can view are the beetle gallery sculptures and hornet nest paper art  of Ann Savageau, professor emeritus of the Department of Design; bee, butterfly and beetle specimens from the Bohart Museum; and images by UC Davis alumnus and noted insect photographer Alex Wild, curator of entomology at the University of Texas, Austin. Wild received his doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 2005, studying with major professor Phil Ward. 

The Bohart Museum houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It is also the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity.   Special attractions include a “live” petting zoo, featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks, praying mantids and tarantulas. Visitors are invited to hold some of the arthropods and photograph them.  The museum's gift shop, open year around, includes T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy. 
 
The Bohart Museum holds special open houses throughout the academic year. Its regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. The museum is closed to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and on major holidays. Admission is free. More information on the Bohart Museum is available by contacting (530) 752-0493 or emailing bmuseum@ucdavis.edu or Tabatha Yang at tabyang@ucdavis.edu.

Elina Lastro Niño, co-coordinator

Rachel Vannette, co-coordinator

The UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology is gearing up for a plethora of seminars for the winter quarter--ranging from understanding insect behavior to understanding biodiversity.

The department launched the seminars  Wednesday, Jan. 10 with epidemiologist Amy Morrison of Iquitos, Peru, discussing dengue.

The seminars will continue through March 14. All will take place on Wednesdays from 4:10 to 5 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall, Kleiber Hall Drive.

Next up: UC Davis alumnus Fiona Goggin, a member of the entomology faculty, University of Arkansas, will present a seminar on “Molecular and Phenomic Approaches to Study Plant Defenses Against Insects and Nematodes” from 4:10 to 5 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 17 in 122 Briggs Hall.

Goggin, who received her doctorate from UC Davis and her bachelor's degree from Cornell University,  focuses her research program on plant defenses against herbivory, with emphasis on mechanisms of resistance against vascular feeders such as aphids and root-knot nematodes.

Seminar coordinators are assistant professor Rachel Vannette; Extension apiculturist Elina Niño;  and Ph.D student Brendon Boudinot of the Phil Ward lab.

The list of speakers:

Jan. 17: Fiona Goggin, professor of entomology, University of Arkansas and a UC Davis alumnus. Topic: “Molecular and Phenomic Approaches to Study Plant Defenses against Insects and Nematodes."

Jan. 24: David Gonthier, postdoctoral fellow, Clare Kremen lab, UC Berkeley. Topic: to be announced. His primary research objective is to understand the importance of biodiversity across natural and managed ecosystems.

Jan. 31: Amanda Hodson, UC Davis postdoctoral fellow and assistant professional researcher with Louise Jackson's Soil Ecology Lab, UC Davis. Topic: "Molecular Detection and Integrated Management of Plant Parasitic Nematodes." Her research interests include soil ecology, integrated pest management and ecological intensification of agricultural systems.

Feb. 7: Marm Kilpatrick, assistant professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UC Santa Cruz. Topic: to be announced. He studies ecology of infectious diseases and population biology.  His research "unites theory and empirical work to address basic and applied questions on the ecology of infectious diseases as well as population biology, evolution, climate, behavior, genetics, and conservation."

Feb. 21: Kerry Mauck, assistant professor of entomology, UC Riverside. Topic: to be announced. She studies insect vector behavior, plant-pathogen interactions, chemical ecology, and integrated disease management.

Feb. 28: Candidates for nematology position. (Pending)

March 3: John Tooker, associate professor of entomology and Extension specialist, Department of Entomology, Pennsylvania State. Topic: to be announced. His areas of expertise include insect ecology, plant-insect interactions, conservation biological control, chemical ecology and gall insects.

March 7: Alvaro Acosta-Serrano, senior lecturer, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Topic: to be announced. His research focuses on fundamental aspects of the biology of kinetoplastid parasites and their vectors, and on developing molecular tools to control and prevent parasite transmission in disease-endemic areas.

For more information, contact Vannette at rlvannette@ucdavis.edu; Niño at elnino@ucdavis.edu or Boudinot at boudinotb@gmail.com.

How appropriate are many of the common names of insects!

Take the immature form (caterpillar) of the moth, Schizura concinna, family Notodontidae.  We first spotted this caterpillar on our Western redbud tree (Cercis occidentalis) in September 2010.

It has a red hump. The common name: The redhumped caterpillar.

Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis, told us that the red hump contains a defensive formic acid gland. "They hold their anal prolegs, which are not useful for walking, in the air and thrash their rear ends in unison when disturbed. This is the ONLY defoliator of redbud around here, and is very common. It also attacks walnut and a variety of other chemically-distinctive trees that other things don't eat, as a rule."

We wondered if these little thrashing visitors should concern us. "The damage is minor, and I strongly advise against spraying; hand-picking can be used if control is deemed necessary, but they feed so late in the season that there is no actual harm to the tree," he told us. "The moth is very nondescript. It holds its wings wrapped around the body cylindrically and looks remarkably like a cigarette butt, though it is probably 'imitating' a broken-off twig. Despite authoritative commentary to the contrary, they have two broods a year here but are usually seen in fall. The species is native on both coasts and oddly absent in most of the mid-continent."

We thought we might see redhumped caterpillars on our liquidambar (sweet gum) trees that we planted more than two decades ago. We never have.

What we did see this week is that the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM) has revised its Pest Notes: Redhumped Caterpillar.  A recent UC IPM blog described the caterpillar as a "familiar pest on fruit and nut trees such as plum, almond, cherry, and apple, as well as on ornamental trees like liquidambar and birch. It can reach high populations in California's Central Valley, sometimes defoliating entire trees."

The Pest Note, co-authored by entomologists Emily Symmes, UC IPM and UC Cooperative Extension, Sacramento Valley, and Steve Dreistadt, UC IPM, describes the pest, its life cycle, and the damage rendered.  You can read about a variety of management techniques.

Ah, the redhumped caterpillar...

And if you're curious about common names and scientific names of insects, the Entomological Society of America (ESA) maintains a Common Name Database, "an essential reference for anyone who works with insects. It includes more than 2,000 common names and is searchable by common name, scientific name, author, order, family, genus, and species."

Have a suggestion for a common name? You can propose it on the ESA form.  Names are reviewed by the Committee on the Common Names of Insects and voted on by the ESA Governing Board.

It's probably unlikely, however, that redhumped caterpillar, will undergo a name change any time soon. That red hump is so descriptive!

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Take it from the bee scientists. Honey is NOT vomit.

That incongruous belief that “Honey is bee vomit” is resurfacing on a number of YouTube channels, opinion pieces and other Internet posts. It's usually said with great glee: “Honey is bee vomit! It's bee puke! It's bee barf!”

Is it #FakeNews?

We asked noted honey bee guru Eric Mussen, Extension apiculturist emeritus at the University of California, Davis, whose career in bee education spans four decades, to settle the issue. Although he retired in 2014, he keeps active. Last year he completed a term--his sixth--as president of the Western Apicultural Society. He maintains an office in Briggs Hall.

And he continues to answer questions about bees and honey.

“As for the bees and vomit issue, the explanation requires quite a bit of knowledge,” Mussen says. It's about an "expandable pouch called 'the honey stomach' (which we humans do not have) and a valve called the "proventriculus" (which we humans do not have)."

“As most people know, honey begins as a dilute sugar solution secreted by ‘nectaries,' sugar syrup-secreting glands which are located in flowers or in extra-floral nectaries,” Mussen explains. “Pollen is not a natural constituent of nectar.  The nectar is sucked up by honey bees and it passes into an expandable pouch called the ‘honey stomach.'  This is the pre-digestive part of the part of the digestive tract that honey bees use to bring water and nectar to the hive.  In honey bees and other insects, this ‘crop' precedes the portions of the digestive tract used for digesting food.  There is a unique valve between the crop and the ventriculus (midgut), called the ‘proventriculus,' that has rake-like projections that constantly pull particulates, like pollen grains, from the crop contents and push them along for digestion.”

“A nectar-foraging bee,” Mussen points out, “returns to the hive and pumps out the nectar to a receiving bee.  An enzyme is mixed with the crop contents that reduces sucrose (table sugar), a disaccharide normally found in nectar, into two monosaccharides (glucose and fructose) that are the principal sugars in ripened honey.  If the nectar is not immediately used as a water substitute or for diluting thick honey or solid pollen stores to allow swallowing, it is carried to the area in the hive where honey is being processed.  The nectar is passed to processing bees that blend the incoming nectar loads, mix them together, then pump out a bit of solution and hold a small sheet of the syrup in its partially distended mouthparts.  Water evaporates from the surface of the syrup.  The drier solution is drawn back into the crop and mixed with the other contents.”

“Then the film is again exposed to the air.  That process repeats itself until the moisture content of the syrup falls below 20 percent.  Evaporation is influenced significantly by the relative humidity.  Since honey will ferment at moisture contents above 20 percent, it is important to leave the honey with the bees until it can be immediately processed in locations with high humidity.  That honey will seem to be thin.  During the summer in California, the ambient relative humidity is quite low--15 percent or less.  In that case, honey produced in the Central Valley can have a moisture content of 13 to 13.5 percent.  That honey is quite thick.”

As an aside, “pollen grains are likely to be found in honey,” Mussen says. “Wind-blown pollens can fall into flowers that are open faced.  Pollen grains are collected by hairs on the bees' bodies.  They can get onto the mouthparts and become consumed with the nectar.  Nectar-processing bees may have eaten some pollen in the hive before processing the honey.  This is how the pollen grains get into honey.  They do not necessarily get consumed with the fresh nectar.  Physical contaminants of honey have to be quite small, like pollen grains, since the bees ingest all their food by drinking it through a straw-like proboscis with a very small opening at the tip.  Most of the physical contaminants are removed by the proventriculus.”

And here's the point: “Since honey never is mixed with digesting food in the intestinal tract, it is inaccurate to refer to honey as ‘bee vomit.'  A dictionary definition of vomit includes ‘disgorging the stomach contents through the mouth.'  Since a human does not have a crop, the stomach is in direct contact with the esophagus and mouth.  In a bee, the proventriculus and crop are in direct contact with the mouth.  The digestion of solid foods in bees begins in the ventriculus and there is no way that a honey bee can bring that food back through the proventriculus, or ‘vomit.'

 Which begs the question: Why can't we enjoy honey for what it is, not for what it isn't?

We can. Mark your calendar to attend these two events: the  second annual California Honey Festival on May 5 in downtown Woodland (it's held in partnership with the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center) and the fourth annual UC Davis Bee Symposium: Keeping Bees Healthy (hosted by the Honey and Pollination Center and the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology) on March 3 in the UC Davis Conference Center. The Bee Symposium will feature keynote speaker Thomas Seeley, the Horace White Professor in Biology at Cornell University, New York.

Interested in beekeeping? UC Davis Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño and her lab will teach a number of classes this spring, beginning March 24, at the Harry H.Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis campus.

The schedule and links to the capsule information:

• Planning Ahead for Your First Hives: Saturday, March 24
• Working Your Colonies: Sunday, March 25
• Queen-Rearing Techniques Short Course: Saturday and Sunday, April 21-22 course; Saturday and Sunday, April 28-29 course
• Bee-Breeding Basics: Saturday, June 9
• Varroa Management Strategies: Saturday, June 16