The UC Davis Bee Haven is not just the home of honey bees, Apis mellifera.
The half-acre pollinator demonstration garden, installed in the fall of 2009 by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology (ENT), is also the home sweet home of native bees, plus many other pollinators.
Located at 1 Biology Road, next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, the garden thrives with scores of native bees drawn to the 200 native plants. In fact, UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Professor Robbin Thorp (1933-2019) detected and identified more than 80 different species of native bees in the garden. That's amazing, considering that California is the home of some 1600 native bees.
Those who visited The Haven at the 15th annual UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day stood in front of the colorful and newly painted garden shed and admired the native bee mural.
Who did that?
The project dates back to 2010 when 22 UC Davis students enrolled in an Entomology 001 class, "Art, Science and the World of Insects," taught by entomologist-artist Diane Ullman (now UC Davis Distinguished Professor Emerita) and self-described "rock artist" Donna Billick of Davis. The two founded and co-directed the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program. Billick created the six-foot-long, ceramic-mosaic sculpture, Miss Bee Haven, that anchors the garden.
Sarah Dalrymple, then a doctoral student in the lab of Professor Rick Karban, served as the graphics project coordinator and teaching assistant for the native bee mural, guiding the students on design, creation and installation of the panels. (She went on to be named the 2011 recipient of the UC Davis Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award and praised for fusing the boundaries of biology, art and culture.)
The 22 students portrayed 22 bees, including such natives as mason, sweat, squash, leafcutter, blue orchard, carpenter and bumble bees. However, a non-native bee, the honey bee, is also portrayed because of its pollinator prominence. European colonists brought the honey bee to America in 1622. It was not introduced to California until 1853.
Here's a list of the bees on the murals and Thorp's notes:
Top Row:
1. Honey bee, Apis mellifera by Bryce Sullivan. "Our most important managed pollinator of agricultural crops."
2. Comparison of pollination efficiency between the blue orchard bee (BOB), Osmia lignaria propinaua, and the honey bee, Apis mellifera by Maxx Becker. "Female BOBs are often more effective pollinators than honey bees individually, but managed honey bees can be supplied in greater numbers."
3. Andrena sp. by Chris Wong. "A solitary mining bee."
4. Bumble bee, Bombus sp. by Laura Chu. "A female buzz-pollinating a tomato flower."
5. Squash bees, Peponapis pruinosa, by Madel Soriano.
6. Melissodes sp. by Jessa Faustino. "Female collecting pollen, sleeping males on right. Note long antennae of male – the reason these bees are called long-horned bees."
2nd Row:
7. Leafcutting bee female, Megachile sp., by Jamie Nakatani.
8. Blue orchard bee, Osmia lignaria propinqua, by Jennifer Tso.
9. Bumble bee, Bombus sp., by Robyn Burnett.
10. Honey bee, Apis mellifera ,by Cassie Buckingham. "Note the large pollen load on hind leg pollen basket."
11. Green sweat bee, Agapostemon sp. by Safa Rashid.
3rd Row:
12. Carpenter bee, Xylocopa sp., by Victor Lor. "Female making a nest by tunneling into wood."
13. Small carpenter bee, Ceratina sp., by Caitlyn Jones. "Note: includes nest she constructs by hollowing out pithy stems, using some of the chewed-up pith to partition her brood chambers."
14. Leafcutter bee, Megachile sp., by Andrew Yip. "Female carrying leaf piece back to her nest tube to make brood chambers, nest below with larvae in thimble-like leaf brood chambers."
15. Wool carder bee, Anthidium manicatum, by Christine Chen. "Female scraping hairs off leaf to be used to make her brood chambers in some hollow tube."
16. Sweat bee, Lasioglossum sp., by Drew Malin. "They are called sweat bees because they often alight on one’s skin to lap up perspiration for moisture and salts."
17. Green sweat bee, Agapostemon sp., by Anthony Ngo. "A male, probably A. texanus, our local species."
Bottom Row:
18. Cuckoo sweat bee, Sphecodes sp., by Andrew Robello. "Female cuckoo at nest entrance waiting for host sweat bee to leave so she can enter and deposit her egg in the hosts brood chamber."
19. Honey bee, Apis mellifera, by Kiele Argente.
20. Cleptoparasitic bee, Triepeolus sp., by Bao Nguyen. "A cuckoo bee in the digger bee family."
21. Leafcutting bee, Megachile sp., by Brandon Brotoatmodjo. "Female cutting leaf piece for her nest construction."
22. Bee vision in ultraviolet (UV) spectrum by Kevin Taylor. "A bee's vision includes the near ultraviolet, which is invisible to our eye."
The Haven is open from dawn to dusk. There's no admission charge. Director of The Haven is bee scientist Elina Niño, professor of Cooperative Extension, apiculture; a member of the ENT faculty; and founding director of the California Master Beekeeper Program. Samantha "Sam" Murray serves as the education and garden coordinator of The Haven. Others who are part of "The Bee Team" are Kian Nikzad and Wendy Mather, co-program managers of the California Master Beekeeper Program, and Joseph Tauzer, facility manager of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility. For more information--to sign up for the newsletter, donate, or register for group tours---contact beehaven@ucdavis.edu.
Cover image: Then UC Davis doctoral student Sarah Dalrymple pointing to the native bee mural on the garden shed. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)