The Spirit of the Hive: The Mechanisms of Social Evolution. That's the title of a newly published book written by Robert E. Page Jr., one of the world's foremost honey bee geneticists.
If you haven't made it over to the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis, yet this year, you should. The trees that form "Orchard Alley" are blooming. You'll see almonds and plums flowering, and soon, apples. Really spectacular are the delicate plum blossoms.
People aren't the only ones favoring fava beans. Fava beans growing in a raised bed in the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis, are attracting honey bees, European paper wasps, lacewings, ladybugs, aphids and carpenter bees.
There's a good reason why jumping spiders are named "jumping spiders." They jump. A jumping spider, according to National Geographic, can jump 50 times its body length. We saw this jumping spider (family, Salticidae and probably genus Phidippus) in our flower bed last weekend.