- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Mead or honey wine is the "in" thing, and the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, directed by Amina Harris, has announced plans for three mead classes for January-February and a feast on Feb. 9 that celebrates mead and honey.
"More and more people are becoming familiar with mead right now," Harris said. "Meaderies are opening at the rate of one every three days here in the United States. And there are quite a few new ones right here in California!" In the classes, you'll learn how to make a good mead and what makes a good mead, she said.
The classes:
- Thursday, Jan. 11: Mead-Making Bootcamp
- Friday and Saturday, Jan. 12-13: Beginners' Introduction to Mead Making
- Friday and Saturday, Feb. 9-10: The Styles and Nuances of Mead Making
- Friday, Feb. 9: The Feast: A Celebration of Mead and Honey
The Mead-Making Bootcamp, set from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 11 in the LEED Platinum Teacher and Research Winery, will be directed by Chik Brennerman, winemaker for the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology, along with assistant winemaker Melissa Pellinii. The hands-on class is limited to 40. The class will feature small learning groups, each with its own UC Davis leader. Each group of 10 will follow a basic mead recipe, completing each step. Finally, students will bottle mead made in previous workshops. The agenda includes a welcome and introductions by Harris; a lecture by Brenneman and Pellini on "What Is Mead? A Recipe for Sweet Success?" Continental breakfast and lunch are included. The cost is $200. Registration is underway here.
The Styles and Nuances of Meadmaking is a two-day course on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 9-10 in the Robert Mondavi Institute Sensory Building, featuring keynote speaker Chrissie Zaerpoor of the Williamette Valley of the Pacific Northwest. She is a meadmaker, organic farmer and author of "The Art of Mead Tasting and Food Pairing." The book is billed as "the world's first complete mead appreciation book, with pairing suggestions for all types of mead and food, including Paleo, gluten-free, dairy-free and vegetarian. Zaerpoor offers some 50 recipes in her book. In addition to keynoting the event, she will be help develop each of the tastings that will take place over the two days. Registration is underway here. The "early bee" special is $775, and after Jan. 7, it's $825. A centerpiece of the program will be the Center's annual Feast: A Celebration of Mead and Honey on Friday evening.
Feast: A Celebration of Mead and Honey: This is the fifth annual celebration and will take place from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 9 at the the Honey and Pollination Center at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science. A pollinator-inspired menu will be paired with a selection of meads, including a variety of UC Davis products and campus-grown produce. The menu will feature mead pairings by meadmaker Chrissie Manion Zaerpoor. This is billed as an elegant fundraiser to help support the Center's mission of making UC Davis the world's leading authority on bee health, pollination and honey quality. The cost is $150. Registration is underway here.
The Honey and Pollination Center, launched in 2011 and affiliated with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is located in the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science on Old Davis Road, UC Davis campus. Professor Neal Williams of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology serves as the faculty co-chair. Among the many affiliated with the center are department faculty Elina Lastro Niño, Extension apiculturist, and Eric Mussen, Extension apiculturist emeritus.
The center, Harris says, aims to increase consumer, industry and stakeholder understanding of the importance of bees, pollination, honey and other products of the hive to people and the environment through research, education, and outreach. She may be reached at aharris@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
You're in luck. UC Davis has you covered.
Want to buy the Honey Flavor and Aroma Wheel? Check.
Want to buy honey (wildflower, orange blossom, coriander)? Check.
Want insect/floral photography notecards? Check.
Want insect collecting equipment, books, jewelry, candy, posters and t-shirts? Check.
Want t-shirts designed by entomology graduate students? Check.
Want to take beekeeping classes? Check.
Just access these UC Davis pages: the Honey and Pollination Center, the Bohart Museum of Entomology, the Entomology Graduate Students' Association, and the UC Davis Bee lab of Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño.
Here's a sampling of what the Honey and Pollination Center is offering:
- Honey Flavor and Aroma Wheel: "Learn how to describe your honey tasting experience using the groundbreaking Honey Flavor Wheel, published by the Honey and Pollination Center," says Amina Harris, director. "The wheel gives a huge lexicon to the tastes and aromas we find when tasting honey. The wheel production follows six months of research and development."
- UC Davis Wildflower Honey: This is a natural, light and floral Northern California wildflower honey collected throughout the Sacramento Valley.
- UC Davis Orange Blossom Honey: "Orange Blossom Honey celebrates a long history in California," relates Harris. "The first trees were planted in Mexican Los Angeles in 1835 by William Wolfskill. A short while later, William and his brother John planted citrus and grapes just outside of Winters, Calif. at Rancho de los Putos, later renamed the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards. In 1934, 107 acres of the ranch were deeded to the University. Today, Wolfskill Ranch is home to the USDA National Germplasm Repository, a living library of fruit, and an integral part of UC Davis."
- UC Davis Coriander Honey: Harris describes this as "a unique savory-first honey with hints of spices from the east (cardamom, coriander) and a gentle undercurrent of chocolate." Coriander is also known as cilantro. (And if you see bees on the cilantro, check out the pink pollen!)
- Stunning Photography Notecards: These insect and floral note cards (package of eight) "make a wonderful gift," Harris says. The photography is by Kathy Keatley Garvey, who donated the photos for the cards. The photos include California buckeye butterfy on sedum; Western tiger swallowtail butterfly on Mexican sunflower; yellow-faced bumble bee on red buckwheat; monarch butterfly and honey bee on Mexican sunflower, honey bee visiting a tower of jewels (Echium wildpretii), hover fly (syrphid) on Galliardia, male green sweat bee on a seaside daisy, and afemale sweat bee on a purple coneflower.
- Insect-themed jewelry (lots of bee and butterfly earrings)
- Insect-themed candy (great stocking stuffers)
- Insect collecting equipment (try your hand at netting butterflies)
- Books, including such topics as bumble bees, bees, and the state insect--the California dogface butterfly (good reading!)
- Dragonfly and butterfly posters (suitable for framing)
- Stuffed animal toys (insects!)
- T-shirts, featuring dragonflies, butterflies and beetles (so colorful, too!)
And this is unique: you can also name an insect after you or for a loved one through the Bohart's biolegacy program.
The Entomology Graduate Students' Association (EGSA) features innovative, award-winning t-shirts and onesies. All designs are winners, in that they won an annual EGSA contest. The organization is run by and for graduate students who study insect systems. Their objectives are to connect students from across disciplines, inform students of and provide opportunities for academic success, and to serve as a bridge between the students and administration.
Among the design themes (access the website to order):
- Honey bees (our favorite insect!)
- Bug on a bicycle (that would be a wasp on a penny farthing or high wheel bicycle)
- Weevil (see no weevil, hear no weevil, speak no weevil)
- The Beetles (parody of The Beatles crossing Abbey Road)
- Wanna-bees (Hemaris diffinis or snowberry clearing moth masquerading as a bee)
The UC Davis Bee lab of Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño is offering a variety of beekeeping classes, from beginners through advanced. They offer gift certificates for all the classes, which begin Saturday, March 24 and continue through June 16.
All courses will take place at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis campus, beginning Saturday, March 24, with the last one ending June 16.
The schedule and capsule information (also listed on Bug Squad):
- 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
The good news is the Honey and Pollination Center, Bohart Museum of Entomology, Entomology Graduate Students' Association offer gifts year-around; you don't have to wait for a holiday! The beekeeping classes are seasonal.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's especially an honor when a duo--a husband-and-wife nature conservation team--is singled out for that recognition.
Leslie Saul-Gershenz (she holds a doctorate in entomology from UC Davis) and husband, Norm Gershenz, co-founders of the Bay Area-based SaveNature.Org, have namesakes:
Ethmia lesliesaulae and Ethmia normgershenzi are newly discovered species of moths in the rain forests of Costa Rica.
The moths belong to the family Depressariidae and now they're part of the Gershenz family, too!
Both new species and 20 others in the genus are described in the Zookeys paper, A Synopsis of the Genus Ethmia Hübner in Costa Rica: Biology, Distribution, and Description of 22 New Species (Lepidoptera, Gelechioidea, Depressariidae, Ethmiinae), with Eephasis on the 42 Species known from Área de Conservación Guanacaste by E. Phillips-Rodríguez, J.A. Powell, W. Hallwachs and D. H. Janzen. The larvae feed on plants in the genus Drymonia (Gesneriaceae).
- Ethmia lesliesaulae has been recorded from both sides of the Cordillera Volcánica de Guanacaste at altitudes ranging from 300 to 645 meters.
- Ethmia normgershenzi has been recorded from the east side of the Cordillera Volcánica de Guanacaste from 400 to 660 meters.
Norm and Leslie co-founded SaveNature.Org, an international conservation program, a 501(c)( 3), to "protect terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems worldwide and to inspire stewardship in the public through hands-on education programs." Norm serves as the chief executive officer and director of the Insect Discovery Lab (IDL). SaveNature.Org conducts nearly 800 hands-on conservation education programs in schools throughout the Greater Bay Area, and reaches more than 38,500 children annually with its IDL.
They make the news. Their work has been highlighted in National Geographic, Time magazine, and ABC's World News Tonight. Robert Pringle's recent article, Upgrading Protected Areas to Conserve Wild Biodiversity, in the journal Nature, details the organization's collaborative work to increase the size of protected areas.
The organization has added 74,000 acres of wildlife habitat to large-scale National Parks around the world and protected marine habitat and watersheds in the Latin America, Asia and the Caribbean. To date, SaveNature.Org has raised more than $4.7 million to help preserve thousands of acres of rain forest, coral reef and desert habitat around the world. Their catchy theme: "Saving Nature Is Habitat Forming."
Norm was affiliated with the San Francisco Zoo for more than 18 years as an educator, member of the animal care staff, fundraiser, and researcher. Norm has quite the biography: he has tracked black rhinos in Zimbabwe, chased orangutans in Borneo, and stalked the elusive platypus in Australia. He has handled boas and bobcats, pandas and elephants, snow leopards and koalas, hippos and hornbills. He has worked as a field biologist and naturalist in Borneo, Malaysia, India, Nepal, Costa Rica and Namibia.
Basically, the larvae of the parasitic blister beetle produce a chemical signal or allomone, similar to that of a female bee's pheromone to lure males to the larval aggregation. The larvae attach to the male bee on contact and then transfer to the female during mating. The end result: the larvae wind up in the nest of a female bee, where they eat the nest provisions and likely the host egg.
"Our research has added to the understanding of the communication signals of bees in the genus Habropoda," she related. "We now know that they use long-chain hydrocarbons for the female sex attractant and vary the position of the double bounds in different components and vary proportions of these components to avoid cross attraction among closely related species. Parasites co-opt this communication channel to deceive male bees in the Meloe-Habropoda system."
Leslie is also a 2004 graduate of The Bee Course, an intensive 10-day workshop sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History at the Southwestern Research Station, Portal, Ariz. One of The Bee Course instructors is Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis.
Leslie's presented her research at the Entomological Society of America meeting in November in Denver, Colo. Her next research presentation will be the California Native Plant Society Conservation conference, scheduled Feb. 1-3, 2018 in Los Angeles.
Overall, moths boast incredible diversity, according to Jerry Powell, emeritus professor at UC Berkeley and co-author Paul Opier, in their masterwork, "Moths of Western North America" (University of California Press). They describe and illustrate some 2500 species in their book. The region is comprised of some 8,000 named species of moths. Most attract attention only when their larvae create economic damage, such as eating holes in woolens, infesting stored foods, boring into apples, damaging crops and garden plants, or defoliating forests.
Meanwhile, Ethmia lesliesaulae and Ethmia normgershenzi are right at home in the rain forests of Costa Rica, and their namesakes are right at home in their Bay Area-based conservation group.
And meanwhile, if you want an insect named for you or a loved one, here's one way: Contact the Bohart Museum of Entomology's biolegacy program. Insects that need naming include a stiletto fly from Australia and Thailand, said director Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis.
(Editor's Note: Insect images from Wikipedia, courtesy of E. Phillips-Rodríguez, J. A. Powell, W. Hallwachs and D. H. Janzen)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
UC Davis distinguished professor Bruce Hammock, who researches how to control acute and neuropathic pain, recently received an “outstanding achievement” award from the Eicosanoid Research Foundation at its international meeting in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
His work on the enzyme, soluble epoxide hydrolase and its inhibitors, spans nearly 50 years of research. Human clinical trials of the Davis compounds aimed at controlling pain are expected to begin in 2018.
“The achievement award is lovely and probably the only thing I will ever own from Tiffany Jewelers,” quipped Hammock, who holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Hammock drew appreciation and applause from his colleagues following his plenary lecture on “Control of Acute and Neuropathic Pain by Inhibiting the Hydrolysis of Epoxy Fatty Acid Chemical Mediators: Path to the Clinic.”
In his talk, Hammock traced the history of his work to 1969 in the laboratory of UC Berkeley Professor John Casida. Hammock, where he was a graduate student and later a postdoctoral fellow. At the time, Hammock was researching insect developmental biology and green insecticides when he and colleague Sarjeet Gill (now a UC Riverside professor) discovered the target enzyme in mammals that regulates epoxy fatty acids.
“The work led to the discovery that many regulatory molecules are controlled as much by degradation and biosynthesis,” Hammock said. “The epoxy fatty acids control blood pressure, fibrosis, immunity, tissue growth, pain and inflammation to name a few processes.”
Since then, his laboratory has published almost 900 peer-reviewed papers in the epoxide hydrolase field.
“For many years Sarjeet and I were alone in studying this enzyme and pathway but now its importance is well recognized in mammalian biology with over 17,000 peer reviewed papers in the area,” Hammock said. “The importance of this pathway is now clear.”
Hammock collaborates with scientists worldwide, including UC Davis professors Aldrin Gomes, physiology; Fawaz Haj, nutrition; Robert Weiss, nephrology; Kent Pinkerton, pediatrics; Alan Buckpitt and Pam Lein, School of Veterinary Medicine; Niipavan Chiamvimonvat, cardiology, and Nicholas Kenyon, pulmonology.
“It is always important to realize that the most significant translational science we do in the university is fundamental science,” said Hammock, a native of Little Rock, Ark., who began his academic studies at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, where he received his bachelor's degree in entomology. “The epoxide hydrolase work is a great example going from developmental biology in butterflies to blood pressure and pain in man. However, the extreme and poorly treated pain that I observed as a medical officer in a burn clinic in the Army, is a major driver for me to translate this knowledge to help patients with severe pain. Hopefully, we can start human clinical trials next year.”
“One of the leaders in the lipid field--Bill Lands--stated that 'If the science is not fun, it should not be done.' Certainly, the discovery of a new biochemical pathway that regulates so much of human biology is interesting, and the science to get there is grand fun. A great personal pleasure from this work has been the wonderful scientists that I have collaborated with. They have taught me a lot about diverse fields, and many have become treasured friends.”
EicOsis, a Davis company that he founded, is working to move inhibitors of the soluble epoxide hydrolase into the clinic. They have been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Program to move the inhibitors into human trials targeting chronic or neuropathic pain with a non-opiate analgesic. In parallel. they are developing a drug to treat a commonly fatal pain condition in horses called laminitis as well as arthritic pain in dogs and cats.
Hammock's longtime collaborator, Dipak Panigrahy, a physician and assistant professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and a researcher with Harvard's Center for Vascular Biology Research, praised his “incredible commitment to science and medicine with extraordinary outside-the-box reasoning.”
“His keen intellect and reasoning, ability to communicate complex ideas, and dedication to teaching the next generation of scientists is unparalleled,” Panigrahy said, adding “Bruce is kind, compassionate, inspiring and also a loving husband and father to three incredible kids.”
Panigrahy cited Hammock's many accomplishments that led to the Eicosanoid award. “Bruce pioneered the first class of pharmaceuticals to directly address the cytochrome P450 (CYP) pathway of arachidonic acid metabolism. These soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) inhibitors are powerful pharmacological tools to raise EET levels. They are being evaluated in clinical trials for cardiovascular diseases and are being considered for long-term use in diabetes, stroke, cerebral ischemia, dyslipidemia, pain, immunological conditions, eye diseases, neurological diseases, renal disease, organ damage, vascular remodeling, atherosclerosis, ischemia-reperfusion, lung disease (chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases-COPD), graft stenosis, cancer, and other medical conditions.”
“In addition, Dr. Hammock's laboratory has demonstrated that epoxides of omega 3 or fish oil fatty acids are more potent than EETs in many assays, Panigrahy said. “Importantly, Dr, Hammock's studies are providing insight into the outcome of dramatically increasing omega 3 lipids in the U.S. diet."
Hammock, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors, has led a team of more than 40 scientists and students with what program manager Cindy McReynolds describes as “unprecedented research with a multidisciplinary, integrated approach to research focused on insect biology, mammalian enzymology, and analytical chemistry.” He has produced more than 1000 publications on a wide range of topics in entomology, biochemistry, analytical and environmental chemistry in high quality journals. The laboratory has generated more than 80 patents.
The Hammock lab is the home of the UC Davis/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Superfund Research and Training Program. Lab alumni total more than 65 graduates, who now hold positions of distinction in academia, industry and government. The list also includes more than 300 postdoctoral fellows.
The historical research funding base is diverse and includes long-term grants from NIH, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, UC Mosquito Research Program and many private and research foundation contracts and grants.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
I'm just a little ol' honey bee foraging on lavender.
I left my warm colony in Vacaville, Calif. to see if there's any nectar out there. My sisters are hungry. I'm not sure if we have enough honey to tide us over until spring.
Look, here's some late-blooming lavender amid all those frost-bitten blossoms. Mine! All mine! I don't have to share. No other pollinators around. No predators around like praying mantids and spiders, either. Just me. All mine. I'll take my time.
I'm just a little ol' honey bee foraging on lavender. You can take my photo if you like. Or several.
Just don't take my nectar. My sisters are hungry.