The "honey bee reproductive ground plan" hypothesis that originated two decades ago at the University of California, Davis with bee geneticist Robert E Page Jr. (right) is drawing international attention.
There's something so magical and captivating about the metallic green sweat bee. Shouldn't it be yellow? No. Is it a bee? Yes. Does it attract attention? Definitely.
Chemical ecologist Walter Leal, professor and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, and his postdoctoral researcher Zain Syed have done it again. In August of 2008, they discovered the secret mode of the insect repellent, DEET.
A bee is a bee is a bee? Poet Gertrude Stein ("a rose is a rose is a rose") could have said that. True, there's only one species of honey bee in the United States--Apis mellifera, the Western or European honey bee--but there are several races.
