This bug's for you.

And this one, too.

And that one over there!

When UC Davis employees and their offspring visited the Bohart Museum of Entomology during the recent "Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work" Day, reactions ranged from awe to "wow!"

They held walking sticks (stick insects), Madagascar hissing cockroaches and tomato hornworms. Two youngsters held  tarantulas. And all checked out the butterfly and beetle specimens.

One little girl, Olivia Bingen, 4, who was there with her father, Steve Bingen of the UC Davis Department of Music, was dressed in pink and asked the Bohart scientists if they had any pink butterflies.

"She likes pink," her father said. She also likes to play the violin.

The Bohart Museum of Entomology, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, UC Davis campus, houses a global collection of nearly eight million insect specimens. It also includes a gift shop and a live “petting zoo,” comprised of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas.

The museum, founded in 1946 by the late Richard M. Bohart and now directed by Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis professor of entomology, is open to the public from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m., Mondays through Fridays, except on holidays. Admission is free.

Special weekend events, free and family friendly, are held throughout the year. The next weekend event is Moth Night from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 3. Blacklighting will take place just outside the museum. Inside, the attendees will visit the museum's displays and, outside, they will see what insects are attracted to the black-lighted white sheets.

Among those scheduled to host Moth Night are John "Moth Man" DeBenedictis; senior museum scientist Steve Heydon; entomologist Jeff Smith, who curates the Lepitopdera (butterflies and moths) section of the Bohart; and Greg Kareofelas, Bohart associate and naturalist.

Hear that buzz? Today is World Bee Day!

We celebrate honey bees every day, but they are especially celebrated on May 20, World Bee Day. It's an annual day to raise awareness about the importance of bees and beekeeping. It's a day to acknowledge the industriousness of Apis mellifera,  their role in our lives, and their place in our ecosystem. Bees pollinate a third of the food we eat.

A bit of history: The United Nations approved Slovenia's proposal to proclaim May 20 as World Bee Day in December of 2017. Slovenia also sought to pay tribute to noted beekeeper and native son Anton Janša (1734-1773) of Carniola (now Slovenia), a pioneer of modern apiculture, a noted painter, and an apiculture teacher at the Habsburg Court in Vienna.

Janša became a full-time beekeeper in 1769. He began by tending his father's 100 hives, but a year later, he received a royal appointment as Austria's teacher of apiculture. He kept bees in the imperial gardens (Augarten) and traveled the country, eager to present information about his beloved bees.

Janša "became famous for his lectures in which he demonstrated his knowledge of bees," according to Wikipedia. "He also wrote two books in German: Discussion on Beekeeping and A Full Guide to Beekeeping. The latter was published in 1775, after his death. In Full Guide, Janša noted: Bees are a type of fly, hardworking, created by God to provide man with all needed honey and wax. Amongst all God's beings there are none so hard working and useful to man with so little attention needed for its keep as the bee."

Janša is known for "changing the size and shape of hives to a form where they can be stacked together like blocks," according to Wikipedia. "As a painter, he also decorated the fronts of hives with paintings." Slovenia beekeepers preserved his Janša Beehive and also erected a plaque at his home.  A Yugoslavian stamp (1973) bears his portrait.

A tip of the veil to Anton Janša!

More locally, the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, part of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, celebrated bees during the "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work" Day. UC Davis employees and their offspring visited the half-acre garden on Bee Biology Road, admiring the flowers and the six-foot-long bee sculpture, Miss Bee Haven, that anchors the garden. The ceramic-mosaic sculpture is the work of Donna Billick of Davis, a self-described "rock artist."

Anton Janša would have felt right at home!

Among the bee haven visitors that day were two beekeepers: elementary school student Adelaide Grandia of Woodland and her grandfather Dwight Grandia of Gulf Shores, Alabama, who has kept bees for 39 years. "I've had hives in the Atlanta area for 25 years and in northern Alabama for 10 years," he said. "I'm teaching my granddaughter beekeeping." He recently set up a bee hive for her.

"My grandpa is a beekeeper," Adelaide said, "and a pilot." Her mother, UC Davis Professor Liza Grandia of Native American Studies, is also interested in bees.

David Hernandez, who works in the Facilities Management Steam Shop, brought his sons, Aayden, 10, and Evan, 8. They checked out the garden, installed in the fall of 2009, and gathered for a photo behind the pollinator cut-out board, as did colleague Kris McBride of the Facilities Management Steam Shop and son, Deegan, 4-1/2.

UC Davis staff employee Xu Chunying and son, Andy, delighted in the catch-and-release activity, in which youths catch bees in a vacuumlike tube device, examine them, and then release them. Honey bees, native bees and carpenter bees are favorite subjects.

Ariel Cormier, who works in the Office of the Chancellor and Provost as manager of Budget and Financial Analysis, attended with her eight-year-old twin daughters Casey and Gabrielle.  They delighted in the bees, blossoms, and  the beautiful day.

The Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, located next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, is open to the public from dawn to dusk. Admission is free. Group tours are also available for a small charge. For more information, access the website.

Rachael Freeman Long treasures her memories as a graduate student in entomology at the University of California, Davis.

• She remembers eating fried grasshoppers at a party. "They're okay with a lot of spices!"
• She remembers watching Professor Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. and his wife, Ruth, give one another bee stings on their hands at Bee Biology, now the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility. "I keep thinking about that as I get older!"
• She remembers learning about bees from Robbin Thorp (now a distinguished emeritus professor of entomology), who served on her thesis committee. "I still keep in touch!"
• And she remembers the time that a professor sparked her interest in biocontrol.  Professor Les Ehler (1946-2016) "took a leaf  out of his lunch cooler and held it in the air to show us some aphids on it, and a wasp appeared and parasitized them." He laughed and said "That's how it's done!"

"Wow! Cool!" she thought as the wasp parasitized the aphids.

Rachael went on to receive her master's degree in entomology in 1987 (studying with major professor James R. Carey); to join the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources as a UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE) farm adviser for field crops and pest management for the three-county area of Yolo, Solano and Sacramento; and to develop and share her interests in biocontrol and other topics.

And this week the UC Davis alumnus-UCCE farm adviser was named the recipient of the 2019 Bradford Rominger Agricultural Sustainability Leadership Award. She will receive the award at a presentation at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, May 28 in the Alpha Gamma Rho Hall (AGR) room of the Walter A. Buehler Alumni Center. A reception begins at 4.

The award, established in 2008, honors individuals who exhibit the leadership, work ethic and integrity epitomized by the late Eric Bradford, a livestock geneticist who served UC Davis for 50 years, and the late Charlie Rominger, a fifth-generation Yolo County farmer and land preservationist.

The award presentation prefaces the Agricultural Sustainability Institute's Distinguished Speakers' Seminar, “Building a Better World, the Opportunity to Achieve Climate Drawdown and a Safe Future" by environmental scientist Jonathan Foley, executive director of Drawdown.  Foley, ranked by Thomas Reuters as among the top 1 percent of the most cited global scientists, will address the crowd from 5 to 6 p.m.

Rachael is a native of Berkeley and the daughter of a UC Berkeley biology professor. She received her bachelor's degree in biology from UC Berkeley.

In 1992 she accepted a position as a pest management, low input systems UCCE adviser for Yolo, Solano and Sacramento counties. This was one of the first sustainable agricultural adviser positions within UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR), with a focus on developing programs to manage pests in field crops with minimal impacts to the environment.

When Rachael started her projects 27 years ago, her ideas were considered “way outside the box and on the fringe,” she recalled. Now her work is mainstream with the UC Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM) guidelines incorporating the value of habitat planting for enhancing natural enemies and pollinators on farms for better pollination and biocontrol of crop pests.

Long is known for her research and advocacy of hedgerows, her leadership in teaching others about agriculture, and her drive to mesh farming, food production, and wildlife conservation. As a result of her work, the California Healthy Soils Initiative and Natural Resource Conservation Service established cost share-funding for hedgerow establishment on farms, for pest management and carbon sequestration. 

Long's research focuses on enhancing natural enemies for better biocontrol of crop pests. "Hedgerows are important for enhancing beneficial insects, including bees and natural enemies, for better biocontrol and crop pollination in adjacent field crops, with measurable economic benefits," she says. "Hedgerows can pay off after 16 years for pest control and seven ears if pollination benefits are added in for bees. Bats and birds associated with habitat likewise have economic benefits for helping to control key codling moth pests in walnut orchards."

Long, who worked closely with Charlie Rominger, commented: “I think Charlie would have been excited by this work. When I first started my job, we spent time in the field looking at field edge habitat and all the birds and beneficial insect activity and wondered about their benefits to crop production. Now we know! Lots of positive ecosystem services associated with habitat!  Eric Bradford would have likewise been impressed with work that involved 20 plus years of meticulous research work by strong teams committed to data collection, to document the benefits of field edge habitat to agriculture.”

She and her colleagues have published 14 peer-reviewed papers on hedgerow research.  Her work, with colleagues Kelly Garbach of Point Blue Conservation Science, and Lora Morandin of the Pollinator Partnership, can be summarized in their research article, "Hedgerow Benefits Align with Food Production and Sustainability Goals," published in September 2017 in California Agriculture. Her most recent paper appeared in UC ANR's special global food initiative edition of California Agriculture.

In addition to her research, Long has delivered hundreds of presentations about the importance of hedgerows on farms; conducted and published surveys on how to better reach out to the grower community to enhance the adoption of hedgerow plantings, as well as the importance of bats, birds, and raptors on farms; and has mentored many undergraduate and graduate students.

Long brings teams of researchers together to work on projects focusing on agriculture and ecosystem services, which lead to enhanced conservation on farms. In 2013, she and her colleagues received the California epartment of Pesticide Regulation IPM Innovator Award for work on hedgerows and pest management. She was also a pioneer in developing practices for protecting water quality from non-point source pollution from agricultural runoff in the early 2000s.

Long is also a children's book author of the Black Rock Desert Trilogy (three books): “Gold Fever,” “Valley of Fire” and “River of No Return,” works published by Yorkshire Publishing. They are the end result of telling stories to her son, Eugene, about an adventuresome, kind-hearted, wildlife-loving boy named Jack and three of his friends--a bat named Pinta, a coyote named Sonny and a crow named Midas. She dedicated the books to Eugene ("he heard the stories first") and her husband, David ("for always being there.") (See Bug Squad blog)

The May 28 event is free and open to the public. For reservations, access this website. 

When you're an entomologist exploring Africa, you photograph the lions, tigers and elephants, but you don't forget the insects.

Never forget the insects!

Such was the case when James R. Carey, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology, and his wife, Patty, visited Africa over a seven-year period, returning with amazing images and videos of lions, tigers and elephants...but also a few images of dung beetles,  moths and other insects.

Carey will deliver an educational, innovative and entertaining presentation on “African Odyssey: Wildlife Adventures, Natural Wonders and Indigenous Peoples” at 4:10 p.m., Wednesday, May 22 in 122 Briggs Hall, located off Kleiber Hall Drive, UC Davis campus.

"We drove over 12,000 miles in Sub-Sahara Africa, mostly self drive, including visits to or safaris in 25 national parks and 11 Unesco World Heritage sites in Kenya, Uganda, Botswana, Ethiopia, South Africa, Namibia, Congo, Swaziland, Lesotho and Tanzania," Carey said,

The live narrated video-seminar, hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology as part of its weekly spring seminars, is based on video and pictorial content that the Careys recorded during vacations or on weekend trips during his annual teaching stints on the African continent over the last seven years.

“Although I include some entomological context, the main purpose of my talk is to enlighten everyone who attends about the remarkable—and moderately priced—travel opportunities in eastern and southern Africa,” Carey said. His talk will encompass Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and the Congo in eastern Africa, and Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Swaziland and Lesotho in the south.

Carey will first set the stage with a brief overview of the African continent and follow with three parts:

Part 1: Wildlife adventures, including such topics as mountain gorillas in the Congo, floodlit watering holes, wildebeest migration, Okavango Delta, elephant herds and a wild dog pack in Botswana, plus overland, balloon and horseback safaris, and Namib and Kalahari Desert road trips.

Part 2: Natural wonders and sightseeing, centering on Table Mountain, Victoria Falls, Capes of Good Hope and Agulhas, Zanzibar, genocide and apartheid museums, livestock markets and a sudden flash flood.

Part 3: Indigenous cultures, covering singing fishermen of Lake Kivu, tribal peoples including Batwa pygmy, Hadza bushmen, Himba, Mursi and Dasenich tribes, and township tours of Langa and Soweto slums.

In his first African Odyssey presentation (standing-room only crowd) to the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology in April of 2015, Carey covered “African Odyssey: A Natural History and Cultural Journey Through Uganda, Namibia and Kenya.” Attendees applauded it as “entertaining, innovative and fast moving.” They were so enthralled that no one looked at their cell phone! (Watch presentation on YouTube.)

Known for his technological innovations, Carey received the 2015 Distinguished Teaching Award from the Entomological Society of America. He has taught video instruction methods for the 9-university Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa, including Nairobi and Uganda for seven years.

Carey focuses his research on insect demography, mortality dynamics, health span and aging.  He and population biologist Deborah Roach of the University of Virginia are authors of a soon-to-be-published book Biodemography: An Introduction to Concepts and Methods (Princeton).

Carey, who joined the UC Davis faculty in 1980 after receiving his doctorate in entomology from UC Berkeley, directed the federally funded program, “Evolutionary Ecology of Lifespan,” from 2003 to 2012, with projects ranging from the evolutionary of aging and the biodemography of nematodes and fruit flies to the longevity of red deer and soay sheep in Scotland and the health span in the Tsimani people of Bolivia.