The evolutionary history of honey bees dates back millions and millions of years. Bees are thought to have appeared at least 130 million years ago, according to British biologist Dave Goulson, author of A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees. The oldest known bee in amber is about 80 million old, Goulson estimates. It's a stingless bee "similar to species that live today in South America."

Honey bees? Consider the fossilized worker bee discovered in 30-million-year-old sedimentary rock in Germany.

Natural selection defined them. All of them.

Bee scientist Thomas Dyer Seeley of Cornell University says that "honey bee colonies have experienced millions of years being shaped by the relentless operation of natural selection.  Natural selection maximizes the abilities of living systems (such honey bee colonies) to pass on their genes to future generations."

In an article published in the March 2017 edition of the American Bee Journal on "Darwinian Beekeeping: An Evolutionary Approach to Apiculture," Seeley wrote: "As someone who has devoted his scientific career to investigating the marvelous inner workings of honey bee colonies, it saddens me to see how profoundly--and ever increasingly--conventional beekeeping disrupts and endangers the lives of colonies."

On Saturday, March 3, Seeley will share his experiences, research and suggestions on beekeeping when he addresses the fourth annual UC Davis Bee Symposum, themed "Keeping Bees Healthy."

The all-day event, sponsored by the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center and the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, takes place in the UC Davis Conference Center. Registration ends this week, according to coordinator Amina Harris, director of the Honey and Pollination Center.

Seeley, who will speak at 9:15 a.m., is the Horace White Professor in Biology in Cornell's Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, where he teaches courses on animal behavior and researches the behavior and social life of honey bees. He's the author of Honeybee Ecology: A Study of Adaptation in Social Life (1985), The Wisdom of the Hive: the Social Physiology of Honey Bee Colonies (1995), and Honeybee Democracy (2010), all published by Princeton University Press. His books will be available for purchase and signing at the symposium.

The daylong event "is designed for beekeepers of all experience levels, including gardeners, farmers and anyone interested in the world of pollination and bees," said Amina Harris, director of the Honey and Pollination Center. "In addition to our speakers, there will be lobby displays featuring graduate student research posters, the latest in beekeeping equipment, books, honey, plants, and much more." 

Seeley's talk promises to be both informative and captivating.

Fact is, honey bees "lived independently from humans for millions of years, and during this time they were shaped by natural selection to be skilled at surviving and reproducing wherever they lived, in Europe, western Asia, or Africa," Seeley wrote in the American Bee Journal.

Seeley will share "what can we do, as beekeepers, to help honey bee colonies live with a better fit to their environment, and thereby live with less stress and better health."

It's all about "keeping bees healthy." 

It's not just about the sting or those big eyes.

Ant specialists and other researchers also hone in on big-eyed ants for their relationships with plants.

Those attending a UC Davis seminar this week on big ants will learn all about them, including the phylogenetic morphology.

Brendon Boudinot, a Ph.D. candidate in the Phiil Ward lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will speak on "Phylogenetic Morphology of the Big-Eyed Tree Ants and Kin (Formicidae: Pseudomyrmecinae)" at 4:10 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 28 in 122 Briggs Hall.

This is one of the seminars hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology for the winter quarter.

"Big-eyed tree ants are a singular and diverse group, which, according to the most recent estimates, contains about 300 species, many of which are undescribed," explains Boudinot, president of the Entomology Graduate Students' Association and an active member of the Entomological Society of America.

 "Like their closest relatives, the infamous bulldog ants of Australia, the big-eyed tree ants have a nasty sting, but this isn't what draws our attention to them," he says. "Rather, many species of big-eyed ants have intimate relationships with plants. In the most extreme cases, the ants act as the plants' personal body guards, raining down upon perceived threats as a deluge of stings, and even pruning away competitive vegetation, forming eerily still 'satan's gardens' in South America.'

"In some cases, the plants contribute to the social wellbeing of the ants by investing in public housing, with the ants making their nests in preformed cavities within the plants, such as in the swollen thorns of various Acacia," Boudinot points out. "Indeed, these same Acacia provide the sole nutrition for their protectives ants, in the form of small, yellow, protein-rich food bodies at the tips of their leaves---in other words, the ants have become full vegans. Current evidence suggests that these tight relationships have evolved perhaps a dozen times within the big-eyed ants. However, the adaptations of these ants to living in state-sponsored societies is uncertain. It is one of the objectives of the present research to understand how the bodies of big-eyed ants have transformed over time, allowing the ants to optimize their relationship with plants."

Boudinot will be illustrating his seminar with stunning photos of big-eyed ants, the work of Alex Wild, who received his doctorate in entomology from UC Davis (studying with Phil Ward). Wild is now curator of entomology, University of Austin, Texas.

The UC Davis Entomology and Nematology's series of seminars for the winter quarter are coordinated by assistant professor Rachel Vannette; Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño and Brendon Boudinot.

Have you ever marveled at those amazing male orchid bees, which gather perfume compounds to attract females?

Distributed throughout South and Central America, orchid bees are easily distinguished by their brilliant metallic coloration, primarily green, gold and blue, says researcher Santiago Ramirez, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology.

He'll discuss "The Evolution and Chemical Ecology of Orchid Bees" at the fourth annual UC Davis Bee Symposium: Keeping Bees Healthy on Saturday, March 3 in the UC Davis Conference Center. His talk begins at 10:15 a.m.

“Insects rely more on chemical signals than on any other sensory modality to find, identify, and choose mates,” Ramirez points out. “Euglossine--or orchid--bees constitute a diverse group of conspicuous insect pollinators from tropical America. Male euglossine bees do not produce their own pheromones, but instead gather and accumulate perfume compounds from orchid flowers, fungi, and other resources, to subsequently present to females during courtship display.”

"They are extremely charismatic organisms," he says.

"Male-gathered perfumes are stereotyped, species-specific, and divergent among closely related taxa, suggesting that they play a key role in maintaining, and possibly originating, reproductive isolation among lineages."

Ramirez says that “Most insects rely on chemical signals (semiochemicals) to gain precise information on the location, identity, and quality of potential mates. Despite the ubiquity and importance of semiochemicals across the insect phylogeny, the underlying genetic and molecular mechanisms that control signal chemistry and signal detection remain poorly understood. Moreover, whether insect sex semiochemicals mediate reproductive isolation, speciation, and lineage diversification remains surprisingly unexplored given the vast diversity and ecological dominance of insects on Earth.”

His research involves integrating diverse techniques from multiple disciplines, including behavioral ecology, chemical ecology, population genetics, functional genomics, and neuroethology “to answer specific questions about the genetic basis, function, and evolution of chemosensory communication in arguably one of the most important groups of insect pollinators in the American tropics.”

Ramirez received his bachelor's degree in biology, with honors, from the Universidad de los Andes (Colombia) in 2001, and his doctorate in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard University in 2008. He served as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley from 2008 to 2012 before joining the UC Davis faculty in 2013.

The symposium is sponsored by the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, Robert Mondavi Institute of Wine and Food Science, and the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

Keynote speaker at the symposium is noted bee scientist/professor/author Tom Seeley of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., who will speak on "Darwinian Beekeeping."

The daylong event "is designed for beekeepers of all experience levels, including gardeners, farmers and anyone interested in the world of pollination and bees," said Amina Harris, director of the Honey and Pollination Center. "In addition to our speakers, there will be lobby displays featuring graduate student research posters, the latest in beekeeping equipment, books, honey, plants, and much more."

To register, access the Honey and Pollination Center website. For more information, contact Amina Harris at aharris@ucdavis.edu or Liz Luu at luu@caes.ucdavis.edu.

Why aren't there more women in beekeeping?

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 31 percent of all American farmers are women, contributing $12.9 billion to the agricultural economy, says Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center and coordinator of the fourth annual UC Davis Bee Symposium, set Saturday March 3 in the UC Davis Conference Center.  Quoting from an article in Bee Culture magazine): "In national beekeeping groups women represented less than a third of leadership positions."

Statistics from Bee Culture also indicate that of the 

• national/regional beekeeping/pollinator groups: 30.4 percent are women
• state beekeeping associations: 30 percent are women
• local beekeeping clubs: 42 percent are women

Beekeeper Sharon Schmidt of Phoenix, Ore., who founded the Cascade Girl Organization-Oregon Honey Festival, will shed light on the subject during the Bee Symposium's lightning round on "Women in Beekeeping."

She'll focus on "Women in Beekeeping: Past Accomplishments and Future Pathways."

"I believe we are observing a phenomena among women in which it appears that we are beginning to value ourselves and our skills and becoming more willing to learn from each other," Schmidt says.

Schmidt, who maintains bee hives in Phoenix, at a winery in Ashland, and a nursery in Central Point,  traces her interest in bees to her beekeeper grandmother.  "And my father passed my love of bees and probably more importantly--my understanding of them--along to me. I come from a long line of Wisconsin farmer-cheese makers."

Schmidt founded and directs the non-profit Cascade Girl Organization, which advocates "Healthy Pollinators, Flowers, Landscapes, People." The group sponsors the annual Oregon Honey Festival, which takes place in Ashland on Aug. 18. She serves on the executive board.

Looking back, Schmdit commented: "I became actively involved in learning about bees as both my attraction to them and my increasing sense of alarm about the environment.  The alarm was triggered by my observation of the concurrent and ongoing upward trend in morbidity and mortality among both people and pollinators.  I felt and still believe that there is a common denominator."

Registration is still underway for the all-day UC Davis Bee Symposium, Harris says. The event, open to all interested persons, features keynote speaker Tom Seeley of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., who will discuss "Darwinian Beekeeping."

Seeley, a bee scientist, professor and author, is the Horace White Professor in Biology, Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, where he teaches courses on animal behavior and researches the behavior and social life of honey bees. He's the author of Honeybee Ecology: A Study of Adaptation in Social Life(1985), The Wisdom of the Hive: the Social Physiology of Honey Bee Colonies (1995), and Honeybee Democracy(2010), all published by Princeton University Press. His books will be available for purchase and signing at the symposium.

The symposium is sponsored by the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, part of the Robert Mondavi Institute of Wine and Food Science, and the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

The daylong event "is designed for beekeepers of all experience levels, including gardeners, farmers and anyone interested in the world of pollination and bees," says Harris. "In addition to our speakers, there will be lobby displays featuring graduate student research posters, the latest in beekeeping equipment, books, honey, plants, and much more."

At the close of the symposium, a reception will take place in the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road, west of the central campus. 

(Editor's note: Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño and her lab teach beekeeping courses at UC Davis and also offer the California Master Beekeeper Program.)