A worker bee. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Bystanders panic. Bees can and do react to all the commotion by stinging the first responders and the bystanders. It's especially difficult at night.

So when Extension apiculturist (emeritus) Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, who retired in June 2014 after 38 years of service, was asked about this, and what first responders can do, we thought we'd share the informatoin.

"It is hard to know where to start with protecting people from bee spills," he says.  "Depending upon in what part of the country it happens, the concern about loose bees varies.  In a large metropolitan area, it is likely that someone will try to put down (kill) the bees as quickly as possible.  In rural agricultural areas, the people value the bees and probably would try to salvage as many hives and bees as possible."

"Every potentially responsible agency should have a list of beekeepers to contact when such an incident happens.  The beekeepers can go to the scene, access the problem, and help clean it up."

Eric Mussen

"Water misted into the flying bees will tend to 'ground' them, temporarily, and many will drown," he warns. "To be sure the bees are down for good, some use fire-fighting foam instead of water.  This will cause an enormous financial loss for the beekeeper, but it calms things down rather quickly.  If the bees form a gigantic cluster under an overpass, the bees can be salvaged or, in at least one case, burned up using a flame thrower."

"People should understand that it takes quite a while to upright the hives and get the frames back into them," Mussen says. "They should also know that the bees are not likely to go back into the hives, on their own, until nighttime." Bees do not fly at night.

"If the bees are being 'rescued,' someone has to help haul away the up-righted hives and put them in a safe place," Mussen points out. "Not infrequently the assisting, anonymous beekeepers leave with the hives and never return them to the owner.  Some empty hives have to be left at the scene to collect the remaining bees that are flying around.  They can be picked up early the next morning."

Those are just some considerations, Mussen says. "Every event is different.  If the emergency folks have met with a few beekeepers to talk about what to do, it will go a lot easier if it ever happens."

Good advice.

Samuel Davidson Laughlin

Today is Veterans' Day, honoring and celebrating our U.S. military veterans.

When I think of Veterans' Day, I think of all my ancestors, from the Revolutionary  War on down, who answered our country's call for service. I think of my great-grandfather, Samuel Davidson Laughlin, a color bearer in the Civil War who carried the American flag for the Union Army in  three of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War:  the Battle of Lookout Mountain, and the battles of Chicamauga and Chattanooga. The 6'3" farm boy from Linn, Mo. towered over his fellow soldiers. Height, as well as strength and courage, determined who carried the flags. It was an honor accorded to only a few.

Samuel Davidson Laughlin survived the Civil War but not the wrath of mosquitoes, which targeted him at the Siege of Vicksburg. "He caught malaria in the Yazoo swamps of the Yazoo River," his youngest daughter Esther would recount. "He said they'd spread their blankets and they'd be lying in the water in the morning. The only way they could keep out of the water was to throw fence rails down and put their blankets on top of that. That's where he picked up malaria. There was no sanitation whatsoever, and of course, they had to use the water there for drinking."

Fast forward to today. When we set up two American flags on our front porch this morning, we paid tribute to all the Samuel Davidson Laughlins, past, present and future.  The men. The women. The children. Those who came before us and those who will come after us. 

And we thought of this 18-year-old farm boy turned color bearer who hoisted the Red, White and Blue high over the heads of his fellow soldiers.

But, by chance, did he see other colors, too, outside the battlefield? Like the colors of a monarch butterfly fluttering over the  war-ravaged landscape? A little serenity in all that insanity? A little hope in all that despair? A little glee in all that grief?

We like to think so. 

A mid-life chrysalis?

Well, maybe not mid-life, but definitely out of season.

A female monarch butterfly eclosed today in our little indoor butterfly habitat. Two weeks ago, we “rescued” the caterpillar from a narrow-leafed milkweed plant in our Vacaville pollinator garden and brought it inside.  Our goal: conservation. We sought to protect it from prey, including the resident scrub jays.

So, this morning, we lost a chrysalis and gained a butterfly. She was right on schedule: Eclosure after 10 days as a chrysalis.

When the temperature hit 61 degrees at around 1 p.m., we released her. She fluttered a bit, and then soared straight up, a good 80 feet high. Usually when we release the monarchs, they flutter around, sometimes touching down on a bush and sometimes soaring over it. This one wasted no time.

On its way to Santa Cruz?

Not sure. At 3:30 p.m., we spotted a monarch butterfly--same one?--roosting on our African blue basil as a dozen honey bees buzzed around, gathering nectar.

Meanwhile, the fellow members of her species are winging their way to their overwintering sites: the monarchs east of the Rockies to the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico, and those west of the Rockies to the California coast, including the Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz, and Pacific Grove in Monterey County.  They cluster in eucalyptus, Monterey pines, and Monterey cypresses.

Monarchs do not fly at night. They travel only during the day and then find a roosting spot for the night. "Roost sites are important to the monarch migration," according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service. "Many of these locations are used year after year. Often pine, fir and cedar trees are chosen for roosting. These trees have thick canopies that moderate the temperature and humidity at the roost site. In the mornings, monarchs bask in the sunlight to warm themselves."

How many miles can monarchs travel a day? Between 50 to 100 miles, the Forest Service says. "It can take up to two months to complete their journey. The farthest ranging monarch butterfly recorded traveled 265 miles in one day."

Monarchs use a combination of directional aids, including the magnetic pull of the earth and the position of the sun. They take advantage of the air currents and thermals as they head toward their overwintering sights. 

To think that we humans can barely make it out of the neighborhood without our GPS devices!  

As of 5 p.m., the monarch roosting on the African blue basil is still there. The bees are gone, back to the warmth of their hives.

Tomorrow, our little buddy will warm her flight muscles, sip a little nectar, and take flight.

Safe travels,  Miss Monarch!

Abbas Mohamed

Brian Johnson

Rachel Vannette

There's exciting news today out of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, University of Califoirnia, Davis.

A team of researchers--two faculty members and a graduate student--just published a paper on bee immunity and toxin metabolism today (Nov. 9) in Scientific Reports, part of the Nature Publishing Group. The team: assistant professor Rachel Vannettte; and assistant professor Brian Johnson and his graduate student, Abbas Mohamed.

The journal article is titled Forager Bees (Apis mellifera) Highly Express Immune and Detoxification Genes in Tissues Associated with Nectar Processing. 

When honey bees shift from nurse bees to foragers, or from caring for the brood to foraging for nectar and pollen, the bees “turn on” gene expression with products that protect against microorganisms and degrade toxins, they discovered,

“First, the results suggest that forager bees may use antimicrobial peptides—short sequences of amino acids with general activity-- to reduce microbial growth in stored food resources,” said Vannette, who joined the faculty in September as assistant professor after a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. “This would be a largely unrecognized way that bees protect honey and potentially other stored resources from microbial spoilage. Second, this work shows that forager bees produce toxin-degrading enzymes in nectar-processing tissues.”

“This may allow forager bees to degrade many different kinds of compounds in nectar, before it is stored,” Vannette said. “Bees also vary in their ability to do this—foragers have a greater ability to degrade a variety of compounds than nurses. This may have implications for hive health and management.” 

The scientists found the change in nectar-processing tissues, but not in the gut.   The scientists surmised that the exposure to bacteria or yeasts in the environment may trigger this change, but they did not examine it in the study. it in the study.

"Nice paper,” said Gene Robinson, director of the Institute for Genomic Biology and Swanlund Chair of Entomology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who was not involved in the research. “It had been well known that the division of labor in a honey bee colony is supported by extensive differences in brain gene expression between bees that perform different jobs. This new research shows nicely that this genomic differentiation extends beyond the brain; different complements of active genes in a variety of tissues make each bee better suited for the job it needs to perform."

The team plans to follow up with functional assays to examine the potential of these gene products to (1) reduce microbial growth and (2) degrade a variety of natural and synthetic compounds. 

So, we're anxiously awaiting to hear more!