Garvey also won the top award (the gold award) in two categories: writing for newspapers and writing for a specialized publication.
In addition, she took home a silver award for her feature photo of a honey bee in flight.
Garvey received the awards at the ACE awards ceremony on June 12 in Denver, Colo.
Judges scored the writing entries on content, writing quality, creativity and writing style and awarded one gold, one silver and one bronze in each category.
“You deserve much credit and recognition for your excellent work,” wrote ACE president-elect Elaine Edwards, news media coordinator, Kansas State University. The awards program drew 233 entries.
The best newswriting award was for Garvey's work on "Saving Franklin's Bumble Bee," about UC Davis emeritus professor Robbin Thorp who is monitoring the endangered bumble bee, found only in a small area of southern Oregon and northern California.
The best writing-for-a-specialized publication award was for her work titled “Miss Bee Haven,” about Davis artist Donna Billick's six-foot-long bee sculpture in the Haagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee friendly garden next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis.
The judge of “Saving Franklin's Bumble Bee,” wrote: “Great story. It takes the humble bumble bee disappearance story and reduces it down to a specific local level. I'll bet a lot of people didn't know that the Franklin bee is a specific genus of bee—but they do now. Way cool. The writing was great and the words just flowed so well throughout. I even learned something—and that's saying a lot from me. This is very well done.”
The judge of “Miss Bee Haven” wrote: “Very nice job in describing an art project destined to attract many people to learn more about the honey bee”
This is Garvey's fourth gold award from ACE in four years. A former newspaper editor and a UC Davis communicator since 1986, she is a writer-editor, photographer, news media specialist and web person in the Department of Entomology. In her leisure time, she writes the daily UC ANR blog, “Bug Squad,” which has tallied nearly two million hits since she began writing it in August 2008.
One of her passions is capturing macro images of insects, especially honey bees. Garvey, who grew up on a 300-acre dairy farm in Washington state and earned two degrees from Washington State University, is fascinated by insects, especially honey bees. Both her father and grandfather kept bees.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894