It was "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work" Day, and they did.

Hundreds of UC Davis employees and their offspring--ages 6 and over--visited sites all across campus on Thursday, April 27.

One of the most colorful sites: the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre pollinator, research and demonstration garden located on Bee Biology Road, west of the central campus. 

Visitors viewed the some 200 plant species in the haven, and participated in "catch-and-release" bee observation with devices provided by the haven. They also checked out the six-foot worker bee that anchors the garden. Titled "Miss Bee Haven," it is the work of Donna Billick, a self-described "rock artist" based in Davis. The art in the garden represents both student and community work directed by entomology professor Diane Ullman and Billick, co-founders and co-directors of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program.

"Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day" (TODS) is billed as “an annual national celebration of employers hosting children at their workplace.” It's a popular event at UC Davis. TODS not only exposes youths to what their parents and their peers do at work, but it can serve as a springboard to attend college and envision their future.

It was a picture-perfect day at the haven. California golden poppies glowed, bees buzzed, and butterflies fluttered as the youngsters used their catch-and-release devices to see the bees up close. Some of the participants:

• Chloe Jerng, 8, entered the haven with her dad, Mark Jerng, a UC Davis English professor.
• Samantha Morrill, 8, and her sister, Hannah, 11, joined their mother, Nicole, an employee at UC Davis Athletics
• Isla Robertson, 7, and her brother, Cameron, 4, participated with their mother, Sarah Robertson, an employee at IET Enterprise Applications and Infrastructure Services

History? The garden was installed in the fall of 2009 under the direction of Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and then interim director of the UC Davis Department of Entomology (now the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology). 

A Sausalito team--landscape architects Donald Sibbett and Ann F. Baker, interpretative planner Jessica Brainard and exhibit designer Chika Kurotaki--won the design competition. as judged by Professor Kimsey; founding garden manager Missy Borel (now Missy Borel Gable), now statewide director of the UC Master Gardeners' Program;  David Fujino, executive director, California Center for Urban Horticulture at UC Davis; Aaron Majors, construction department manager, Cagwin & Dorward Landscape Contractors, based in Novato; Diane McIntyre, senior public relations manager, Häagen-Dazs ice cream; Heath Schenker, professor of environmental design, UC Davis; Jacob Voit, sustainability manager and construction project manager, Cagwin and Dorward Landscape Contractors; and Kathy Keatley Garvey, communications specialist, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

The garden is now managed by program representative/entomologist Christine Casey, and faculty director Elina Niño, Extension apiculturist, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

Located next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, the haven is open to the public from dawn to dusk for self-guided tours. Admission is free. For information on guided tours (a fee applies), plants, bee gardening classes, docents and donations, access the website, Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven.

Rice farmers in southeast Asia don't "have a rice day" when the dreaded brown planthopper is infesting their crops.

The brown planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens, or BPH, is the economically most important rice pest in Asia.  It's found only in southeast Asia and Australia, but the methods that a nine-member research team used may be appropriate here in the rice-growing areas of California, says UC Davis agricultural entomologist Christian Nansen, who was part of a nine-member team that just published first-of-its-kind research. It appears in Scientific Reports of the journal Nature.

Using the sustainable pest management method known as "the banker plant system," they did field and laboratory work in China with good results: attracting alternative hosts to parasitoids of rice insect pests, can help protect a rice crop. The players: a grass species, a planthopper, and an egg parasitoid.

Research results showed that BPH densities were significantly lower in the rice fields with the sustainable pest management practice known as the banker plant system compared to control rice fields without the banker plant system, the scientists said.

“Many people are familiar with the concept of a ‘trap crop'-- a sacrificial crop which is planted mixed in with or adjacent to an economically important crop and the trap crop serves to manipulate pests away by offering them a more attractive/suitable host alternative,” said Nansen, an assistant professor with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. “The use of banker plants in pest management is similar to the use of trap crops, but banker plants typically have multiple ecological functions.”

The researchers planted a grass species, Leersia sayanuka, next to rice. It attracted a planthopper (Nilaparvata muiri), which does not infest rice.

“But N. muiri is a very good host for the important egg parasitoid, Anagrus nilaparvatae, which is also a parasitoid of the economically important pest, the brown planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens,” Nansen explained. “So, by planting the grass, the parasitoids have plenty of hosts year round – even after the rice harvest season– and that ensures steady population dynamics of the parasitoid across seasons.”

Rice is the stable food of more than 50 percent of the global population, and 60 percent of the Chinese population. However, scientists concur that the world's rice production needs to increase drastically over the next three decades to meet the growing food demand in Asia. Growing concern over BPH outbreaks and higher pesticide usage led to the sustainable pest management study.

Titled “Use of Banker Plant System for Sustainable Management of the Most Important Insect Pest in Rice Fields in China,” the research is unique in that it is the first published study describing the attraction of alternative hosts to parasitoids of rice insect pests. In rice systems, previously published research involved planting sesame as a nectar source to promote the establishment and persistence of a predatory bug; and studies involving parasitoids.

BPH feeds on the rice crop at all stages of plant growth and can also transmit two viruses, rice ragged stunt virus, and rice grassy stunt virus. Damage can commonly result in a 60 percent yield loss. An infestation is often called “hopper burn,” referring to yellow patches that soon turn brown.

Noting the importance of the banker plant system, Nansen said that banker plants “involve promotion of plant diversity to enhance pest self-regulatory ecosystem functions, such as predation and competition, to reduce susceptibility of agricultural crops to native and invasive pests. Also, banker plants “may provide resources, such as shelter, pollen and nectar or alternative preys to improve the establishment and persistence of beneficial insect populations used to control a specific pest.” The first successful banker plant system, developed in 1977, involved tomato as the banker plant, a parasitoid and a whitefly.

Nansen is affiliated with both UC Davis and the Zhejiang Sustainable Pest and Disease Control, Institute of Plant Protection and Microbiology, Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou, China.

Co-authors of the research paper include lead author Zhongxian Lu and colleagues Xusong Zheng, Yanhui Lu, Junce Tian, Hongxing Xu, all of the Zhejiang Sustainable Pest and Disease Control; and Pingyang Zhu, Facheng Zhang and Guihua Chen of the Jinhua (China) Plant Protection Station.

The study was jointly supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China, Zhejiang Key Research and Development Program, and the Special Fund for Agro-scientific Research in the Public Interest.

It promises to be...oh, so sweet!

The inaugural California Honey Festival, to take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, May 6 on a four-block stretch in historic downtown Woodland, will draw folks from all over state and beyond. And it's free and open to the public.

Coordinated by Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, the festival will offer honey sampling, mead, live bands, talks on beekeeping and bee friendly plants, and vendors offering bee-related wares. And that's just the "bee-ginning."

At the Honey Lab, located in the UC Davis booth, members of the UC Davis Master Beekeeper Program and knowlegeable volunteers will teach festival-goers about "all things honey."

Some of the activities at the Honey Lab booth:

• Taste honey from around the world and check out the giant honey flavor and aroma wheel
• Learn about UC Davis beekeeping and the California Master Beekeeper Program
• Follow how honey is made from flower to bottle
• Marvel at the life cycle of a honey bee, starting with an egg and resulting in a bee just a couple weeks later
• Learn what is harming our bees
• Peruse the different kinds of bee hives and how they work
• Purchase books and UC Davis honey from the UC Davis bookstore

"The California Honey Festival's mission is to promote honey, honey bees and their products, and beekeeping through this unique educational platform, to the broader public," said Harris. "Through lectures and demonstrations, the festival will help develop an interest in beekeeping by the younger generation. Attendees will learn about the myriad of issues that confront honey bees including pesticide use, diseases and even the weather! In addition, attendees can learn how to creatively plant their gardens to help feed all of our pollinators. It is important for the community to appreciate and understand the importance of bees as the lead pollinator of many of our crops adding to the food diversity we have come to enjoy."

One of the speakers is longtime beekeeper Gene Brandi of Los Banos, president of the American Beekeeping Federation, who will speak on the Beekeeping Stage from 10:30 to 11 a.m., and again from 1 to 1:45. Brandi  began working with bees in the early 1970s while attending California Polytechnic Institute (Cal Poly) at San Luis Obispo. After graduation, he began working the bees full time, starting his own business in 1978 and building it up to 2000 colonies.

Brandi, who spoke at a 2015 symposium at UC Davis, said that the major issues that negatively impact colonies include pesticides, varroa mites, nutritional issues and diseases. "It's much more difficult to keep bees alive and healthy today than it was in the 1970s," he told his audience. "I had a 5 percent winter loss in the 1970s, and a 13 to 45 percent winter loss in his operation during the past 10 years."

Among the many other speakers: Extension apiculturist Elina Niño, booked from 11 to 11:45 a.m. and from 2 to 2:45 p.m., and Billy Synk, director of pollination programs for Project Apis m., and former manager of the Harry H. Laidlaw Honey Bee Facility at UC Davis. Sync speaks from 12 to 12:45.

The California Honey Festival website includes a program schedule.

Expect lots of honey--which has been described as "the soul of a field of flowers."

Back in May of 2013, we headed over to the California Center for Urban Horticulture (CCUH) Annual Rose Days on the University of California, Davis, campus. 

A cultivated yellow rose--Sparkle and Shine, related to the Julia Child Rose--caught our eye. Maybe it was because a honey bee was foraging on it. Maybe not.

Today, this floribunda rose is thriving like no other! Its enticing fragrance and bursts of blooms: stunning!

The lone honey bee didn't come with it, but the rose continues to attract bees. Of course, we all know that honey bees prefer such flowers as lavender, borage, bee balm, cosmos, zinnias, goldenrod, mallow and catmint, but don't tell that to the honey bees that frequent our Sparkle and Shine!

And now, it's that time again. CCUH, directed by Dave Fujino, and the UC Master Gardeners, directed by Missy Gable (former program manager of CCUH), are sponsoring their 10th Annual Rose Days from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, May 6 and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday, May 7 at the Foundation Plant Services, 455 Hopkins Road (off Hutchinson Road, west of the central campus). Admission is free.

CCUH says that the weekend will feature rose sales; bus tours to the nearby 8-acre, virus-tested rose fields on Saturday led by Foundation Plants Services; and booths staffed with Master Gardeners and Rosarians from the Woodland Library Rose Club, where they will answer your questions about roses, including how to plant, prune and maintain them. You can also ask them other horticulture-related questions.

This year there are 28 varieties to choose from: see the list on the FPS Rose Encyclopedia: http://fps.ucdavis.edu/roses/collection.cfm?roseday=y. You'll see photos and descriptions of such roses as Angel Face, Drop Dead Red, Ketchup & Mustard, Lemon Splash and All My Loving (perfect for Mother's Day)! New this year: sweet potato plants, according to new program manager Eileen Hollett. A free mini-rose, while supplies last, will be given to attendees.

You can also check out the CCUH website for further information:
http://ccuh.ucdavis.edu/Events/rose-days-may-6th-may-7th-2017

Meanwhile, our yellow rose, true to its name, continues to Sparkle and Shine.

Oh, here comes another bee!