- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
You take a video, email it to the sponsor, the Bohart Museum of Entomology, and you win the 4th annual Robbin Thorp Memorial First-Bumble-Bee-of-the-Year Contest
Congratulations, Nancy Hansen! The Fairfield resident emailed her video of a black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, at 10:57 a.m., Monday, Jan. 1 to the Bohart Museum. (See her video on YouTube)
Contest coordinator Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology and director of the Bohart Museum, applauded the winner as the earliest ever recipient, and the first from Solano County.
Contest rules state that the first person to photograph a bumble bee in either Yolo or Solano and email it to the sponsor, the Bohart Museum, will receive a coffee cup designed with the endangered Franklin's bumble bee, the bee that the legendary Robbin Thorp (1933-2019), a UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor and a 30-year member of the Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty, monitored for decades.
"I've lived in Fairfield since 1970 and I retired from Kaiser Medical Center Vallejo after 33 years," Hansen said. "I'm a longtime gardener and flower-aholic! I'm very interested in soil health, pollinators and in soil microbes. I didn't plant the Madrone tree but I'm happy it provides food for pollinators most of the year. The first year we lived here, 2017, the tree was full of bees. Their buzz sounded like an airplane engine, but since then I've seen fewer and fewer bees."
"On Monday I was out back enjoying the bit of sunshine that had peaked through the clouds when I heard buzzing in my Madrone tree. I went over, looked and I saw a lot of honey bees, but then I looked up and saw the bumble bee. I ran to get my camera hoping I could catch his picture before he flew away."
Hansen retired as a cardiology technician at Vallejo's Kaiser facility, where she performed the cardiology testing for the doctors. "It was one of the most interesting and varied jobs in the facility," she said. "I learned so much during my working years. I was in charge of training new employees so I was able to pass that knowledge on."
Previous record-holders:
2023: Ria deGrassi of Davis, who photographed a B. melanopygus at 12:32, Jan. 8 on a ceanothus in her yard.
2022: Tie between Maureen Page, then a doctoral candidate in the lab of pollination ecologist Neal Williams, professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology; and Ellen Zagory of Davis, retired director of public horticulture for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden. Each photographed a bumble bee on manzanita in the Arboretum at 2:30 p.m., Jan. 1. Page photographed a B. melanopygus, while Zagory captured an image of the yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii.
2021: UC Davis postdoctoral researcher Charlie Casey Nicholson, then of the Williams lab and the Elina Lastro Niño lab, photographed a B. melanopygus at 3:10 p.m., Jan. 14 in a manzanita patch in the Arboretum.
Thorp, a tireless advocate of pollinator species protection and conservation, co-authored two books in 2014, during his retirement: Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University,) and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday). Every year he looked forward to finding or seeing the first bumble bee in the area.
Thorp co-taught The Bee Course from 2002 to 2019. An intensive nine-day workshop affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History and held annually at the Southwestern Research Station, Portal, Ariz., it draws participants from around the world, including conservation biologists, pollination ecologists, and other biologists who want to gain greater knowledge of the systematics and biology of bees.
For years, Thorp monitored Franklin's bumble bee, found only in a small range in Southern Oregon and Northern California, and now feared extinct. He last spotted it in 2006.
Soon Nancy Hansen will receive a coffee cup with an image of that bee.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
She took the video in her Madrone tree, Arbutus menziesii, in her back yard. (See video on YouTube)
Contest coordinator Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology and director of the Bohart Museum, applauded the winner as the earliest ever recipient, and the first from Solano County.
Contest rules state that the first person to photograph a bumble bee in either Yolo or Solano and email it to the sponsor, the Bohart Museum, will receive a coffee cup designed with the endangered Franklin's bumble bee, the bee that the legendary Robbin Thorp (1933-2019), a UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor and a 30-year member of the Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty, monitored for decades.
"I've lived in Fairfield since 1970 and I retired from Kaiser Medical Center Vallejo after 33 years," Hansen said. "I'm a longtime gardener and flower-aholic! I'm very interested in soil health, pollinators and in soil microbes. I didn't plant the Madrone tree but I'm happy it provides food for pollinators most of the year. The first year we lived here, 2017, the tree was full of bees. Their buzz sounded like an airplane engine, but since then I've seen fewer and fewer bees."
"On Monday I was out back enjoying the bit of sunshine that had peaked through the clouds when I heard buzzing in my Madrone tree. I went over, looked and I saw a lot of honey bees, but then I looked up and saw the bumble bee. I ran to get my camera hoping I could catch his picture before he flew away."
Hansen retired as a cardiology technician at Vallejo's Kaiser facility, where she performed the cardiology testing for the doctors. "It was one of the most interesting and varied jobs in the facility," she said. "I learned so much during my working years. I was in charge of training new employees so I was able to pass that knowledge on."
Previous record-holders:
2023: Ria deGrassi of Davis, who photographed a B. melanopygus at 12:32, Jan. 8 on a ceanothus in her yard.
2022: Tie between Maureen Page, then a doctoral candidate in the lab of pollination ecologist Neal Williams, professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology; and Ellen Zagory of Davis, retired director of public horticulture for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden. Each photographed a bumble bee on manzanita in the Arboretum at 2:30 p.m., Jan. 1. Page photographed a B. melanopygus, while Zagory captured an image of the yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii.
2021: UC Davis postdoctoral researcher Charlie Casey Nicholson, then of the Williams lab and the Elina Lastro Niño lab, photographed a B. melanopygus at 3:10 p.m., Jan. 14 in a manzanita patch in the Arboretum.
The contest memorializes Professor Thorp, a global authority on bees and a UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology, who died June 7, 2019 at age 85. He retired in 1994 but continued working until several weeks before his death. Every year he looked forward to seeing the first bumble bee in the area.
Thorp, a tireless advocate of pollinator species protection and conservation, co-authored two books in 2014, during his retirement: Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University,) and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday). Every year he looked forward to finding or seeing the first bumble bee in the area.
Thorp co-taught The Bee Course from 2002 to 2019. An intensive nine-day workshop affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History and held annually at the Southwestern Research Station, Portal, Ariz., it draws participants from around the world, including conservation biologists, pollination ecologists, and other biologists who want to gain greater knowledge of the systematics and biology of bees.
For years, Thorp monitored Franklin's bumble bee, found only in a small range in Southern Oregon and Northern California, and now feared extinct. He last spotted it in 2006.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Windy? 27 mph!
We didn't think we'd see a single bumble bee foraging on the blooming ice plants, poppies, wild radishes, or lupines, but there it was, a black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, nectaring on a yellow lupine near the entrance to Doran Regional Park.
This bumble bee species is one of the earliest to emerge in the spring. We've seen it as early as Jan. 1 in Benicia. And the Bohart Museum of Entomology, UC Davis, coordinates a contest to see who can find and photograph the first bumble bee of the year in the two-county area of Yolo and Solano. This year Ria de Grassi of Davis spotted a B. melanopygus, foraging on her ceanothus plant in her backyard on Jan. 8. (See Bug Squad blog.)
But back to the Bombus at Bodega. How can a tiny bumble bee, ranging from 0.6 to 1 inch in length, withstand that 27 mph wind, which seemed near gale force? Bumble bees pay no attention to gale force, which the National Weather Service defines as between 34 and 47 knots (39 to 54 mph).
Bumble bee authority John Ascher messaged me: "Their flight and resistance to cold is amazing!" Truly!
"Powerful flight muscles are packed into their stout little bodies, which are covered in thick fur," according to an Aug. 2, 2021 post in Imprint Ecology, Chichester, West Sussex, England. "These can propel them through high winds, in comparison to honeybees and butterflies who find it difficult to get airborne in wind above 20 mph. In addition, bumblebees can dislocate their flight muscles and shiver them to keep warm which is very useful on wet, windy days. Even in winter, you can see big queen bumblebees happily foraging on gorse, heather and crocus, when no other insects are out and temperatures have barely reached double figures."
"Bumblebees evolved in the Himalayas, around 25 to 40 million years ago. They are designed to withstand bleak, windy, mountainous climates and don't actually fare very well in hot places."
The black-tailed bumble bee predominantly has pale yellow hair "with bands of black hair between the wing bases and across the middle of the abdomen," according to the quartet of UC-based scientists, Gordon Frankie, (the late) Robbin Thorp, Rollin Coville and Barbara Ertter, in their book, California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists.
They also forage quickly, especially in a strong wind...or an uninvited gust.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
De Grassi spotted—and videoed--a black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, foraging on a prized ceanothus plant on Sunday afternoon, Jan. 8 in her backyard in Davis.
She recorded the video on her cell phone at 12:32 p.m. to win the third annual contest, sponsored by the Bohart Museum of Entomology and memorializing global bee expert Robbin Thorp (1933-2019), a distinguished emeritus professor of entomology. (See her YouTube video)
De Grassi, a former director of federal policy, livestock, animal health and welfare for the California Farm Bureau Federation, credits the storm, the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, and her working relationships with bee scientists, including Thorp, as having a hand in either her find and/or her interest in plants and pollinators.
The three previous winners (2022 was a tie) each photographed a bumble bee in the 100-acre UC Davis Arboretum. Ironically, de Grassi bought her prized ceanothus at an Arboretum plant sale.
“I was doing clean-up in my backyard after Saturday night's rain and a 50-plus mile-per-hour windstorm,” said de Grassi, now an agricultural policy consultant. “The wind had subsided to a breeze by then. As I walked past my Ray Hartman ceanothus—which I purchased from a UC Davis Arboretum plant sale years ago when I did a garden makeover to be pollinator-friendly—I noticed some extra-long ceanothus branches that needed to be pruned, including some with super-early blooming flowers.”
De Grassi returned with her pole trimmer and started cutting. It was then she noticed a bumble bee foraging on her ceanothus--and when she remembered the “friendly Bohart Museum contest” inviting folks to find and photograph the first bumble bee in the two-county area of Solano and Yolo.
De Grassi knew Thorp from her professional work with the California Farm Bureau Federation and from her friendship with bee scientists Timothy Lawrence and Susan Cobey, formerly of UC Davis. “Tim and Sue were active in the California Farm Bureau's statewide Bee Advisory Committee that I managed,” she said. Lawrence is now a Washington State University Extension county director (Island County) and Cobey, a WSU bee breeder geneticist.
“(The late Extension apiculturist) Eric Mussen was the UC Cooperative Extension liaison to that same committee,” de Grassi remembered, “so as native pollinator topics would arise during committee work, Robbin's name and research naturally became relevant to the discussion. A fond memory I have of Robbin is from a Bohart Museum open house (2017) when I told him about seeing a 1/2 black and 1/2 gold carpenter bee in my front yard. I'd never heard of a gynandromorph until he told me that that's what I saw. He asked me to capture one if I ever saw another.”
“I love documenting nature's cool stuff and especially the surprises we uncover when we pause long enough to notice,” de Grassi commented. The caterpillars she discovered eating her coral fountain (aka “firecracker plant,” Russelia equisetiiformis) led to UC Davis distinguished professor Art Shapiro documenting it as a butterfly larval host.
“Gardening for pollinators has become my passion pastime. I like to give native and managed bees pesticide-free forage.”
As her prizes, de Grassi will receive a coffee cup decorated with a the Franklin's bumble bee, and handmade bee gifts (including a zippered bee-motif bag and bee-motif soaps) from Teresa Hickman of Vacaville, owner of "Handmade by Teresa."
De Grassi holds two degrees from UC Davis: a bachelor's degree in agricultural science and management and a master's degree in animal science. She is a former chair of the UC Davis Department of Animal Science Development Board, and a former member of the Cal Aggie Alumni Association Board and the UC Davis Foundation Board of Trustees.
Postdoctoral researcher Charlie Casey Nicholson of the Neal Williams lab and the Elina Lastro Niño lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, won the 2021 contest by photographing a B. melanopygus at 3:10 p.m., Jan. 14 in a manzanita patch in the Arboretum.
UC Davis doctoral candidate Maureen Page of the Neal Williams lab and horticulturist Ellen Zagory, retired director of public horticulture for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, tied for first in the 2022 contest by each photographing a bumble bee foraging on manzanita (Arctostaphylos) in the Arboretum at 2:30 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 1.
Page, who now holds a doctorate in entomology, photographed a B. melanopygus, while Zagory captured an image of the yellow-faced bumble bee, B. vosnesenskii.
Thorp, a 30-year member of the UC Davis faculty, and a tireless advocate of pollinator species protection and conservation, retired in 1994, but he continued working until several weeks before his death on June 7, 2019 at age 85. In 2014, he co-authored two books: Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University,) and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday). Every year he looked forward to finding or seeing the first bumble bee in the area.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Participants are to capture an image of a bumble bee in the wild in either of the two counties and email the image to bmuseum@ucdavis.edu, with the details of time, date and place. The image must be recognizable as a bumble bee, said contest coordinator Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology.
The winner will receive a coffee cup designed with the endangered bumble bee that the late Robbin Thorp closely monitored—Franklin's bumble bee, Bombus franklini, known to exist in a small area by the California-Oregon border. UC Davis doctoral alumnus Fran Keller, a professor at Folsom Lake College and a Bohart Museum scientist, designed the cup. Bohart scientist Brennen Dyer photographed the specimen.
Thorp, a global authority on bees and a distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, always looked forward to finding or seeing the first bumble bee of the year in the area.
The native black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, is the first bumble bee to emerge in the area, according to Thorp. It forages on manzanitas, wild lilacs, wild buckwheats, lupines, penstemons, clovers, and sages, among others.
Thorp served on the UC Davis entomology faculty for 30 years, from 1964 to 1994. Although he achieved emeritus status in 1994, he continued to engage in research, teaching and public service until a few weeks before his death on June 7, 2019 at age 85 at his home in Davis.
Nicholson, a researcher in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology labs of Professor Neal Williams, a pollination ecologist, and Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño, is a 2015 alumnus of The Bee Course, where Thorp taught from 2002 through 2018. The nine-day intensive workshop, geared for conservation biologists and pollination ecologists and considered the world's premiere native bee biology and taxonomic course, takes place annually in Portal, Ariz., at the Southwestern Research Station, part of the American Museum of Natural History, N.Y.
Kimsey praised Thorp for his expertise, generosity and kindness. Kimsey, who first met Thorp when she was a graduate student at UC Davis, said that although he wasn't her major professor, “my project was on bees and he was incredibly helpful and supportive. His enthusiasm about pollinators and bees in particular actually grew after he retired, and he continued helping students and researchers and was the backbone of so much research. His support and kindness was matched by his undemanding assistance and expertise.”
In 2014, Thorp co-authored two books, Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University) and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday).
Thorp, the last known person to see Franklin's bumble bee in its native habitat, spotted it in 2006 near Mt. Ashland. The bee inhabits--or did--a 13,300-square-mile area within the five-county area of Siskiyou and Trinity in California; and Jackson, Douglas and Josephine in Oregon.
Thorp sighted 94 Franklin's bumble bees in that area in 1998, but by 2003, the tally had dropped to three. Thorp saw none in 2004 and 2005; one in 2006; and none since. Thorp's determined hunt for the bumble bee resulted in the CNN publication of "The Old Man and the Bee," a spin-off of Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea."