- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
I've been waiting for a decade to see a male Valley carpenter bee (Xylocopa varipuncta) foraging in our family bee garden.
The girls? Oh, yes. We see them every day. Sometimes half a dozen at a time. They're usually on the salvia or passionflower vine.
The boys? No. They do not go where our girls are. I saw a solo fly-by a couple of years ago, but he did not stop.
Then last Saturday, a male Valley carpenter bee dropped down and nectared on the foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea), the dwarf bulbine (Bulbine frutescens), the catmint (Nepeta) and the blanket flower (Gaillardia x grandiflora).
In that order.
To be honest, a very territorial European male carder bee (Anthidium manicatum) chased him off the foxgloves, so our big boy headed for the catmint and then the blanket flower, where he encountered only docile honey bees.
The male Xylocopa varipuncta is the insect that results in so many similar calls--"I found a golden bumble bee! Is it a new species?" A bumble bee it is not. A carpenter bee it is.
Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, calls the male Valley carpenter bees "teddy bears." That's because they're green-eyed, blond and fuzzy-wuzzy. Thorp reminds curious kids and apprehensive adults that "boy bees can't sting."
Thorp often displays a female Valley carpenter bee (solid black) alongside the blond male to show the sexual dimorphism, or what Wikipedia explains is a phenotypic differentiation between males and females of the same species.
The Boy Wonder is sort of like a blond Marilyn Monroe male courting a Clarkette Gable.
What happened when the Boy Wonder left the blanket flower? He returned to the foxgloves.
Just briefly. Until the wool carder bee targeted him again.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
You will if you attend the Spring Festival hosted at the Loma Vista Farm, part of the Vallejo City Unified School District, on Saturday, May 16. Offering free admission, the festival will take place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 150 Rainier Ave., Vallejo.
The bumble bee nest? It's the home of a colony of yellow-faced bumble bees, Bombus vosnesenskii, a native bee species commonly found on the west coast of North America, from Baja California to Canada.
Rita LeRoy discovered the entomological prize. She's the "Farm Keeper"--that's her official title--at the Loma Vista Farm. "I've worked for the Vallejo school district at Loma Vista Farm for 25 years," she related. "I teach students about nature and nutrition through hands on farm lessons involving cooking, gardening, insect appreciation, and animal care."
The nest is currently roped off, just waiting for two-legged folks to admire and appreciate it. It's a marvel of nature, for sure.
More on the Loma Vista Farm? Founded in 1974, it's a 5-acre outdoor classroom that provides hands-on educational activities involving plants and animals for children of all ages and abilities, according to its website. "We seek to increase students' knowledge of nature and nutrition while enhancing academic learning, ecoliteracy, and psychosocial development."
The farm offers field trips, after-school opportunities through 4-H, community service and volunteer opportunities, garden-based workshops for adults, and job training for college students, developmentally disabled young adults, and disadvantaged youth.
We first visited the Loma Vista Farm back in the 1980s as part of a 4-H activity. It was--and is--a delightful place to be. (And bees think so, too!)
Loma Vista Farm is open to the public Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. during the school year. It is closed on holidays and follows the Vallejo school district calendar.
And the Spring Festival? It's an opportunity for friends and families to visit the farm and participate in crafts and activities. Activities include educational information booths, animal adventures, train rides and greenhouse tours. Download flier.
In the meantime, check out the red pollen load of Bombus vosnesenskii (at left). We saw the bumble bee foraging on vetch last weekend at the Hastings Preserve, Carmel, a biological field station operated by the University of California. The Hastings Preserve was the site of a BugShot macro photography workshop taught by acclaimed insect photographers Alex Wild, John Abbott and Thomas Shahan.
And for more information on bumble bees, be sure to read the book, Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton Press), co-authored by one of our own, Robbin Thorp, native pollinator specialist and distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis. Lead author is Paul H. Williams, and co-authors are Leif Richardson and Sheila Colla.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Varma's time-lapse video of 2500 images vividly shows the development of eggs to pupae to adults. He captured the video at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, University of California, Davis. Varma's images of a bee in flight, and a close-up of an emerging worker bee are also from the Laidlaw apiary.
Those are our girls!
Indeed, our bees from the Laidlaw facility figured quite prominently in the piece, “Quest for a Superbee,” published in the May edition of National Geographic.
Staff research associate/beekeeper Billy Synk worked with and assisted photographer Varma for about a year. Extension apiculturist emeritus Eric Mussen, who retired last June after 38 years of service, served as a research fact-checker. National Geographic contacted him for data confirmation.
The article, authored by Charles Mann, questions “Can the world's most important pollinators be saved?' and ponders “how scientists and breeders are trying to create a hardier honeybee.”
In his article, Mann explores what it would take to build a better bee. He touches on RNAi and quotes bee researcher Marla Spivak of the University of Minnesota and recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” as saying “If you target one specific area, the organism will always make an end run around it.” She advocates a “healthier, stronger” bee, or what Mann writes as “one that can fight (varroa) mites and disease on its own, without human assistance.”
Spivak was the keynote speaker at the Bee Symposium, hosted May 9 by the Honey and Pollination Center in the UC Davis Conference Center. It drew a crowd of 360. (Soon we'll post video from the symposium.)
Spivak and John Harbo of the USDA's research center in Baton Rouge, La. “both succeeded in breeding versions of hygienic bees by the late 1990s,” Mann writes. “A few years after that, scientists realized that hygienic bees are less effective as the mites grow more numerous.”
Both Spivak and Varma have presented TED talks on honey bees.
Spivak: Why Bees Are Disappearing
Varma: A Thrilling Look at the First 21 Days of a Bee's Life
Both of the TED talks should be required viewing for anyone who wants to know more about bees and their needs. Maybe these TED talks should be TEB talks--Take Every Bee Seriously.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Naming our son was easy. We opted for family names handed down 200 years ago.
A puppy? When we acquired a half-St. Bernard, half-German Shepherd mix (the same breed as Buck in Jack London's Call of the Wild), that was easy, too. The puppy insisted on eating the daisies, so...ta-dah.."Daisy."
Kitten? We named our calico kitten, "Indiana Joan," heralding her adventuresome personality that included--but was not limited to--falling into the fish pond. Fast forward to 15 years later. A woman is holding a "Free" sign outside a supermarket and inside a cardboard box is a frightened tuxedo kitten about to be taken to a shelter. We did not name her "Free." Since she proved to be a mix of princess (loves to cuddle, and still does) and warrior (loves to hunt rodents, and still does), she became "Xena, the Warrior Princess."
But how do you name an insect? It's not as simply as "Daisy" or "Indiana Joan" or "Xena the Warrior Princess."
That's why you should attend the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, May 17 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane.
The theme is "Name That Bug! How About Bob?"
Bob is a very good name. Just ask forensic entomologist Bob Kimsey of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and his wife and colleague, Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and UC Davis professor of entomology.
And at least one big box supermarket is quite fond of "Bob." Ever noticed the sign, "Remember BOB?" at the cash register? That clues the cashier to check "Bottom of the Basket (BOB)."
So, when you attend the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house on May 17, you'll meet and chat with taxonomists and other scientists at the Bohart Museum and the California Department of Food and Agriculture who will explain how insects are named. There also will be family arts-and-crafts activities. The event is free and open to the public.
It's good to know that you, too, can name insects. The Bohart Museum sponsors a nonprofit Biolegacy Program, an opportunity to name an insect after yourself or a loved one. For example, there's a new wasp species named “The Bockler Wasp," thanks to a concerted drive to memorialize a beloved and award-winning high school biology teacher.
When the retired science teacher, Donald “Doc Boc” Bockler of Arlington (Mass.) High School, died at age 65, two of his former students from the Class of 1993--Tabatha Bruce Yang of the Bohart Museum and Margaret Dredge Moore of Arlington--launched a fundraising drive to name an insect after him. They selected a newly discovered species in the genus Lanthanomyia and sought the name, Lanthanomyia bockleri.
Senior museum scientist Heydon recently published his work on Lanthanomyia bockleri Heydon in Zootaxa, a worldwide mega-journal for zoological taxonomists and the name is now official.
“Once an article goes through the scientific review process and is published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, the name of the new species is official and immortalized in the scientific literature,” explained Kimsey.
Kimsey described species-naming as “a unique, lasting form of dedication” and “a great honor both for the person giving the name and for the individual or other honoree whose name is being given to the species.”
Heydon explained that Lanthanomyia is a genus whose species are restricted to central and southern Chile and adjacent parts of Argentina. The new species is found in the Nothofagus forests of Patagonian Chile, including Chiloe Island. It belongs to a family of parasitic wasps called the Pteromalidae. “Unlike other related species, this one has a unique dorsal attachment of the head to the thorax," Heydon said. "If you see a specimen of Lanthanomyia with the neck attaching close to the top of the head, you know it is bockleri. Adults are reared from galls on Nothofagus and are thought to be parasites of gall-forming weevils.”
“Donald Bockler was fascinated by evolution and nature and he would have been proud,” said Yang, education and outreach coordinator at the Bohart Museum. Like many other Bockler students, she credits him for influencing her decision to pursue a career in science. For more information, and to obtain a list of species available for naming, contact bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
The Bohart Museum, founded by noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007), 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.
The Bohart Museum's other special attractions include a “live” petting zoo, featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas. Visitors are invited to hold the insects and photograph them. A crowd favorite is a rose-haired tarantula named "Peaches."
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's 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 and on major holidays. Admission is free. Open houses, focusing on specific themes, are held on weekends throughout the academic year.
The next open house is "Moth Night," set from 8 to 11 p.m., Saturday, July 18 on the Bohart Museum grounds. Participants will learn how to collect moths and identify them.
Want more information on the Bohart Museum? Contact Tabatha Yang at tabyang@ucdavis.edu or (530) 752-0493.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's hosted by the UC Davis Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, also known as BAE.
"There are steadily growing concerns about how global and sustainable agricultural production and food security can be maintained in the 21st century and beyond," Nansen says. "It is expected that arthropod pest management in agricultural systems will face profound challenges, as pesticides are being faced out, pests are developing resistance to pesticides, and because growing conditions become less predictable due to climate change and diminishing availability of water for crop irrigation"
"Many arthropod pest outbreaks occur in crops initially being exposed to abiotic stress, such as, drought or unbalanced fertilizer applications. In these cases, an arthropod pest outbreak may be a symptom or consequence of sub-optimal crop management regime."
Nansen's presentation is about "remote sensing of crop stress and how it can be used to minimize risk of pest outbreaks, as crop reflectance data provide insight into some of the mechanisms that are driving pest population dynamics, both temporally and spatially."
At UC Davis, Nansen is focusing on four major themes: host plant stress detection, host selection by arthropods, pesticide performance, and use of reflectance-based imaging in a wide range of research applications.
Born and educated in Denmark, Nansen received his master's degree in biology from the University of Copenhagen in 1995 and his doctorate in zoology from the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Denmark in 2000. He accepted positions in Portugal, Benin, United States, UK and Australia before joining the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology in January as an assistant professor. His international experience also includes being an international exchange student at the University of Lisbon, Portugal and a visiting professor at Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China.
“Agricultural entomology has given me so many opportunities to travel and work internationally, and that has been extremely rewarding,” he said. “I am passionate about food production and how to produce food ‘smartly' – so that it is profitable and also environmentally sustainable. And insects are critically important in manipulated food webs, such as, a crop field, forest, orchard, or horticultural greenhouse. I enjoy studying their ecological roles in these systems and how we can use that information to develop smarter ways to produce food.”
“Even though Denmark is a very small country (5 million people),” Nansen said, “it has been at the forefront of agricultural research and production for many decades."
Nansen previously held faculty positions at Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and most recently at the University of Western Australia. As a university employee, the most common way to “create impact” is by influencing the minds and interests of students, but also of particular stakeholders,” he said.
“While working in Texas, we developed a very effective sampling method for an important insect pest in potato fields, and a 4th generation potato grower (Bruce Barrett) actually changed his management strategy because of our sampling method: he purchased the equipment needed and hired people specifically to conduct insect sampling, as he saw how use of this method could save him thousands of dollars on insecticide sprays--because he would now have a much better idea about when and where to spray. Recently, in Australia we demonstrated to farmers that sub-optimal maintenance of their stored seed grain led to loss of crop vigor and therefore a loss in crop yields. That is, if the seed grain is poorly managed, then stored grain infestations will likely occur, and these beetles will damage the kernels so they don't germinate. We provided simple guidelines for how the grain storage practices could be improved, so quite a few farmers are now following our guidelines to optimize the vigor of their seed grain.”
“Sometimes, we can go further and actually develop tools or gadgets which end-users may find useful. As an example, we have developed a freely available phone app to optimize pesticide spray applications based on weather and spray settings (http://agspsrap31.agric.wa.gov.au/snapcard/). The main goal with this phone app is to guide farmers so that they obtain the best possible spray coverage--to reduce risk of pests developing resistance--and to encourage them NOT to spray pesticides under unfavorable conditions.”