- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Who will find and photograph the first bumble bee of the year in Yolo and Solano counties and win the fifth annual 
In 2024, Fairfield resident Nancy Hansen won the contest with a video of B. melanopygus that she emailed to the Bohart Museum at 10:57 a.m., Monday, Jan. 1. She took the video in her Madrone tree, Arbutus menziesii, in her backyard. (See video on YouTube)
The Bohart Museum of Entomology sponsors the annual contest. The first person to photograph or video a bumble bee in the two-county area and send it to the Bohart Museum at bmuseum@ucdavis.edu--and is jugged the winner--will receive a special coffee cup and bragging rights. The entries must include the time, date and place.
The contest, launched in 2021, memorializes Professor Thorp (1933-2019), a global authority on bees and a UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology, who died June 7, 2019 at age 85. A 30-year member of the UC Davis faculty, he retired in 1994 but continued working until several weeks before his death.
A tireless advocate of pollinator species protection and conservation, Throp 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 seeing the first bumble bee in the area.
The black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, is usually the first bumble bee to emerge in this area, Thorp used to say. It forages on manzanitas, wild lilacs, wild buckwheats, lupines, penstemons, clovers, and sages, among others. The yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, also emerges early. It has been seen nectaring on roses, lavender and jade.
Previous winners:
2023: Ria deGrassi of Davis photographed a B. melanopygus at 12:32, Jan. 8 on a ceanothus in her yard.
2022: Two scientists shared the 2022 prize: UC Davis doctoral candidate Maureen Page of the Neal Williams lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and horticulturist Ellen Zagory, retired director of public horticulture for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden. They each photographed a bumble bee foraging on manzanita (Arctostaphylos) in the 100-acre Arboretum at 2:30 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 1. Page photographed a black-tailed bumble bee, B. melanopygus, while Zagory captured an image of the yellow-faced bumble bee, B. vosnesenskii.
2021: Postdoctoral researcher Charlie Casey Nicholson of the Neal 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 UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden.
Director of the Bohart Museum is Professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
The Bohart, the home of a global collection of eight million insect specimens, is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. It also includes a live petting zoo, and an insect-themed gift shop.
Another UC Davis-originated contest is the annual “Beer for a Butterfly” contest, launched in 1972 by butterfly guru Art Shapiro, now a UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus.
The person who finds and videos the first live cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, of the year in the three-county area of Sacramento,Yolo andSolano, will receive a pitcher of beer or its equivalent. The rules stipulate that contestants must collect a live butterfly in the wild, video it, and email the entry to the Bohart Museum at bmuseum@ucdavis.edu, with the time, date and place. The insect must be an adult—no caterpillars or pupae—and must be captured outdoors, Shapiro said.
Shapiro, who has monitored butterfly populations in Central California since 1972, and maintains a research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/, says the point of the contest "is to get the earliest possible flight date for statistical purposes.” It's all part of his scientific research involving long-term studies of butterfly life cycles and climate change.
Assisting with the 2025 contest will be the Bohart Museum of Entomology, directed by Professor Jason Bond, who is the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. (See more on Bug Squad)
