- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
That's how we felt when we recently visited the one-acre pollinator bee garden of Kate Frey and her artist husband, Ben, in Hopland, Mendocino County. It's magical.
Kate, a world-class garden designer, and bee expert Gretchen LeBuhn, professor in the San Francisco State University, have just co-authored The Bee-Friendly Garden, an educational, enthusiastic and inspiring book that will help you turn your own garden--large or small, rural or urban--into something magical.
Among her many honors, Kate Frey twice won gold medals at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show in London and received a Silver Gilt award in 2003. She met Queen Elizabeth, who admired her work. Currently Kate directed and taught at Sonoma State University's Sustainable Landscape Program with Extended Education, and consults for various wineries and residences around California, including The Melissa Garden in Healdsburg (privately owned and now closed) and Lynmar Estate Winery in Sebastopol. Her website, http://freygardens.com, offers more information about her and her mission. It's all about the pollinators and how to attract them!
The Frey/LeBuhn team says it well in the preface: “Bee gardens make people happy. Whether you enjoy a brilliant chorus of saturated color, a tranquil sanctuary from the busy world, or a hardworking edible garden, there is a glorious, flower-filled bee garden waiting for you.”
They cover:
- The Benefits of a Bee Friendly Garden
- Our Friends, the Bees
- Plants for Your Bee Friendly Garden
- Bee Friendly Plants for Edible Gardens
- Bee Garden Basics
- Designing Your Bee Garden
- Beyond Your Own Backyard: Becoming a Bee Activist
Their book also contains resources, and regional plant lists for the Southeast, South Central, Southwest, and Pacific Northwest regions, Rocky Mountain/Intermountain West Region and the Northeast/Midwest/Mid-Atlantic Region.
The Frey/LeBuhn team recommends that you “keep a notebook throughout the year and write down the names of plants and which bees are visiting them. This is a fun and informative exercise wherever you go—from your home, to visiting friends, to walks around the neighborhood or anywhere you go in the world,” they write. “Much information can be gleaned this way, much discovered and much shared. Everyone can be a local expert.”
We love the photos of pollinators and gardens in the book—many taken in the Frey garden and in the Melissa Garden. They also focus on small-scale gardening—you don't need a huge space for a bee garden. (The urban Garvey garden is an example!)
Laurie Davies-Adams, executive director of the Pollinator Partnership, says that “this book will make bees happy and healthy in gardens across the country.”
Yes, and people, too!
(Note: The Frey garden will be open June 18 for the Garden Conservancy Open Days Program. See https://www.gardenconservancy.org/open-days/garden-directory/frey-gardens. Here is the entire schedule: https://www.gardenconservancy.org/events/all-events/mendocino-county-ca-open-day-3)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's good to see UC Davis mosquito researchers featured in the KQED's science program, "Deep Look."
KQED journalists recently traveled to the UC Davis campus to visit several mosquito labs. The end result: The KQED news article on “How Mosquitoes Use Six Needles to Suck Your Blood,” which includes an embedded video. The National Public Radio's health blog, “Shots,” includes a shorter version. You can also see the Deep Look video on YouTube (embedded below).
- Parasitologist and entomologist Shirley Luckhart, professor in the UC Davis School of Medicine's Department of Medical Microbiology and immunology and the Department of Entomology and Nematology
- Medical entomologist Gregory Lanzaro, professor, Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology (PMI), UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, and an associate of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
- Chemical ecologist Walter Leal, professor in the UC Davis Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology
- Virologist Lark Coffey of PMI
- UC Davis post-doctoral researcher Young-Moo Choo of the Leal's lab who discovered a receptor by dissecting mosquitoes' mouthparts and genetically testing them.
“Mosquitoes don't find the blood vessel randomly," Leal said, pointing out that the receptors respond to chemicals in the blood.
The receptor that the Leal lab discovered is called 4EP, and may lead to drug companies developing new mosquito repellents. “First they'd need to find a repellent against the receptors," Choo told Quirós. "Then they'd treat people's skin with it. When the mosquito tried to penetrate the skin, it would taste or smell something repulsive and fly away.”
But back to the video. The narrator reveals the sophisticated tools that the mosquito uses to draw your blood.
- A protective sheath retracts: inside are six needles, and two of them have sharp, tiny teeth
- The mosquito uses the sharp, toothed needles to saw through your skin
- Other needles hold the tissues apart while she works
- Receptors on the tip of one of her needles guide her to your blood vessel.
- She uses the same needle like a straw to sip your blood
- She uses another needle to spit chemicals into you so your blood will flow easily. That's what gives you the itchy, scratch-me-now welts.
Of course, it's the viruses or parasites that the mosquito transmits that can sicken and kill us. Depending on the species, they give us such diseases as malaria, dengue, yellow fever, West Nile virus, Zika virus and elephantiasis.
As KQED says "This is the deadliest animal in the world. Mosquitoes kill hundreds of thousands of people each year...the most vulnerable people: children and pregnant women."
KQED performed an excellent public service in reporting and sharing this scientific information, gleaned from the UC Davis labs. The first day the video was posted, it drew nearly 400,000 views.
We worry about what mosquitoes do to us. If mosquitoes could talk--if they could communicate with us--they ought to be worried about what we're going to do to them.
(Access the American Mosquito Control Association website to learn the biology of mosquitoes.)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's an insect collecting trip to Belize for the Bohart Museum of Entomology, UC Davis.
Praised by entomologists for its insect diversity, Belize is a rain-forested country on the eastern coast of Central America, bordered on the north by Mexico, on the south and west by Guatemala, and on the east by the Caribbean Sea.
Leading the 'blitz, set June 20-July 1, are entomologists Fran Keller, who holds a doctorate in entomology from UC Davis and teaches at Sonoma State University, and David Wyatt, an entomology professor at Sacramento City College. Keller, a longtime Bohart Museum associate and volunteer, studied with Wyatt before enrolling in the UC Davis graduate program. Wyatt has taught entomology at Sac City for 15 years. This marks his 12th trip to Belize.
Keller and Wyatt are already in Belize, teaching a Sonoma State class, June 6-June 17. See their blog at https://belizebiodiversity.wordpress.com. "So we are setting up a lot of the collecting equipment early so it will be running for two weeks before the Bohart folks even get here," Keller said.
A 21-member team of professionals, entomology graduates, college students and a couple of teens will participate in the 10-day Bohart Belize Bioblitz. One of them is 17-year-old Noah Crockette of Davis, a longtime Bohart Museum volunteer who will mark his second consecutive collecting trip to Belize.
Crockette won the 2015 senior award from the Coleopterists Society and will be surveying some of the dung beetles from the Stan Creek District in Belize.
"He is an excellent student to mentor and I only hope I am as good a mentor as he is such an excellent student and terrific person," said Keller, who showed him the ropes--along with the bugs, bats, butterflies, birds and frogs--on the 2015 trip.
The bioblitz team met June 1 in the Bohart Museum for a pre-trip discussion. Among those participating: entomologist and "butterfly guy" Jeff Smith, who curates the Bohart Museum's butterfly and moth collection; Bohart Museum senior scientist Steve Heydon; UC Davis entomology graduates Joel Hernandez and Melissa Cruz; former UC Davis Entomology Club president Maia Lundy; and entomology student Tom Nguyen; and "beetle guy" Larry Bezark.
"We are trying to collect as much as we can and some insects will stay in Belize at the field station but most are coming back to the Bohart," said Keller, who studied for her doctorate with major professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart. The insect museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, is the home of nearly eight million insect specimens, collected worldwide.
Thousands more will be collected June 20-July 1.
At the pre-trip meeting, Wyatt and Keller promised an educational, safe and fun trip. "I brought Noah back alive, didn't I?" Keller quipped. Laughter ensued.
"Are you ready for an adventure?" Keller asked the Bohart Belize Bioblitz team. "It's a phenomenal country."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
A crab spider nailed a major pest, a lygus bug, Lygus hesperus. It's something you don't see very often. But you appreciate very much.
A lygus bug made the fatal mistake of feeding on a blanket flower (Gaillardia) where the cunning spider was lurking and waiting for prey...er...dinner.
A venomous bite and it was all over.
The lygus bug is easily distinguishable by its triangle or V shape on its back. The V does not stand for "Victory" when it's attacked and consumed by a crab spider.
Do not feel sorry for lygus bugs. Their piercing mouthparts suck the lifeblood (juices) right out of the plant tissues. You may have seen them feeding on berries, beets and beans. The females lay their eggs in the plant tissues. Their visible path of destruction ranges from discoloration and deformation to leaf-curling and lesions.
"Lygus bug adults are about 0.25 inch long and 0.1 inch (2.5 mm) wide, and flattened on the back," according to the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM). "They vary in color from pale green to yellowish brown with reddish brown to black markings, and have a conspicuous triangle in the center of the back. Nymphs resemble adults, but are uniformly pale green with red-tipped antennae; larger nymphs have five black spots on the upper body surface. Nymphs do not have wings." (Read UC IPM Pest Management Guidelines for more information and how to control them.)
The some 200 host plants of lygus bugs include Russian thistle, wild radish, London rocket, black mustard and goosefoot.
Their enemies are many. "A parasitic wasp, Anaphes iole, which attacks lygus eggs, is available commercially and can be used for inoculative releases," UC IPM says. "It can reduce lygus populations in strawberry fields; but because thresholds for this pest are very low and adults moving into the field from external sources are not controlled, economically acceptable results may not be achieved. Naturally occurring predators that feed on the nymphal stages of lygus bug include bigeyed bugs (Geocoris spp.), damsel bugs (Nabis spp.), minute pirate bugs (Orius tristicolor), and several species of spiders."
Spiders? Yes, indeed.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Katydids did it.
When it comes to the best of the industrial-strength shredding machines, they're it.
The nymphs have been feeding our Iceland poppies, chewing incredible holes in petal after petal, and then looking around for more. They leave behind what looks like shredded cabbage.
But if you catch them early in the morning with the sun lighting them up, they're kind of beautiful with their thin, angular legs; antennae longer than their bodies; and beady looking eyes fixated at you. The nymphs can't fly, so when disturbed, they merely hop away, camouflaged in the vegetation.
"Katydids occasionally become damaging pests in orchards where broad-spectrum pesticides were not applied or are under minimum tillage programs," according to the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program's Pest Note on Katydids. "High numbers of these pests may occur near raisin and wine grape vineyards, where the do no damage to the fruit."
"Nymphs feed on leaves or fruit early in the spring as they climb from the ground to the tree. Katydid nymphs tend to take one bite out of a fruit before moving on to another feeding site. Hence, a few katydids may damage a large number of fruit in a short time. Feeding wounds heal over and enlarge into corky patches as the fruit expands. The most serious damage occurs when katydids feed on young fruit, which become severely distorted as they develop. Nymphs and adults also chew holes in foliage. Smaller nymphs feed in the middle of the leaf, creating small holes, whereas larger nymphs and adults feed on the leaf edge."
See more information by Googling "katydids UC IPM." You'll find information on UC IPM guidelines for katydids on citrus, nectarine, pomegranate, pear, apricot, plum and other crops.
Meanwhile, those katydid nymphs continue to frequent our Iceland poppies. Other dinner guests--uninvited--are showing up, too. Let's make a hole in one! (Or two, or three!) Let's eat! Let's shred!
