There are nearly 8 million insect specimens in the Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California, Davis.

As of Friday noon, Aug. 25, there's also one tree.

It's a fir.

And no, it has nothing to do with the pending holiday season.

It's for the Bohart Museum's open house, “Bark Beetles and Trees, Forest Health in California," being organized by chemical ecologist Steve Seybold, a research entomologist with the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, Davis, and a lecturer/researcher with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology,

The open house, open to the public, with free admission and free parking, is set from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, Aug. 27 at the museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, Crocker Lane.

“The Bohart Museum on Sunday will be Bark Beetle Forest Central,” said Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator.

The attendees will learn a lot about the beetles that are attacking our forests.

“As of last winter, bark beetles had killed 102 million trees in California during the last drought period,” said Seybold, a Davis resident who holds a doctorate in entomology from UC Berkeley and a bachelor of science degree in forestry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Tree mortality in the western USA over the past 15 years caused by native bark beetles exceeded 21 million hectares, which surpasses all other disturbances, including fire.”

Seybold is known for his pioneering research on the walnut twig beetle, Pityophthorus juglandis, associated with widespread mortality of black walnut in the western United States.

Said Seybold: “We are planning to have a series of four to five ‘stations' that illustrate the mass attack of native bark beetles on pine and fir trees; the biology and impact of invasive species of bark beetles and woodborers; and the flight trapping and chemical ecology of bark beetles.  We are also planning some craft activities for kids that involve the gallery patterns that bark beetles etch on wood during their life cycles.”

They will be joined by local environmental artist  Ann Savageau, a mixed-media artist whose work includes creating sculptures from wood with gallery patterns on it. Savageau, who retired as a professor of design from UC Davis in 2002, is now a full-time artist. She describes her work as dealing with :the natural world, human culture and their intersections."

Seybold's scientific crew at the Bohart Museum on Sunday will include be Yigen Chen, former research entomologist with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and now with Gallo Wines in Modesto, Jackson Audley and Corwin Parker, UC Davis entomologist graduate students; Irene Lona, graduate student at California State University, Chico; Megan Siefker, UC Davis junior specialist; and  Crystal Homicz, UC Davis, undergraduate student.

Numerous Bohart Museum scientists and volunteers also will participate. “We'll have a family craft project that will deal with the beetle gallery,” Yang said.

The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis professor of entomology, is a world-renowned insect museum that houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It also maintains a live “petting zoo,” featuring walking sticks, Madagascar hissing cockroaches and tarantulas. A gift shop, open year around, offers T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy. 

The Bohart Museum's regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. The museum is closed to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and on major holidays. Admission is free. 

More information on the Bohart Museum is available by contacting (530) 752-0493 or bmuseum@ucdavis.edu. The website is http://bohart.ucdavis.edu/

Entomologist Jeff Smith, who curates the butterfly and moth collection at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California, Davis, had a "Monarch Kind of Day" Wednesday, Aug. 23 at a surprise party heralding his 70th birthday and his 30 years of volunteer service.

"We'd be a shadow of what we are without Jeff," said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and professor of entomoogy at UC Davis. The museum houses a global collection of nearly eight million insect specimens, which includes more than 400,000 butterflies and moths.   It is also the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. The museum is named for the late Richard M.Bohart (1913-2007), noted  UC Davis professor of entomology.

The cake, decorated with a monarch butterfly motif created by a local bakery, drew Smith's attention and enthusiasm. When asked to identify it, he smiled and said: "It's an iconic monarch."

Smith won a 2015 Award of Distinction from the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences for his volunteer service. See news story.

Kimsey, who nominated him for the award, noted at the time that Smith "has saved the museum some $160,000 over a 27-year period for his volunteer service."

“You could not ask for a better friend than Jeff Smith,” she said, mentioning that he has “brought us international acclaim and saved us $160,000 through donations of specimens and materials, identification skills and his professional woodworking skills (he creates the finely crafted specimen drawers.) This does not include the thousands of hours he has donated in outreach programs that draw attention to the museum, the college and the university.”

Kimsey, who has directed the museum since 1989, remembers when Smith joined the museum. “When Jeff was working for Univar Environmental Services, a 35-year career until his retirement in 2013, he would spend some of his vacation days at the museum. Over the years Jeff took over more and more of the curation of the butterfly and moth collection. He took home literally thousands of field pinned specimens and spread their wings at home, bringing them back to the museum perfectly mounted. To date (2015) he has spread the wings on more than 200,000 butterflies and moths. This translates into something like 33,000 hours of work!”

Now, it's much more than that, but who's counting?

Not Jeff Smith.

"Entomology is my passion," he says, "and the Bohart Museum is my cause."

(Editor's Note: The Bohart Museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane,  will host an open house, "Bark Beetles and Trees, Forest Health in California," on Sunday, Aug 27 from 1 to 4 p.m. The Bohart Museum will turn into Bark Beetle Forest Central. Planning the open house is Steve Seybold,  a research entomologist with the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, Davis, and a lecturer with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. “As of last winter, bark beetles had killed 102 million trees in California during the last drought period," Seybold said. “Tree mortality in the western USA over the past 15 years caused by native bark beetles exceeded 21 million hectares, which surpasses all other disturbances, including fire." The open house is free and open to the public. Parking is also free.)

Excitement is building for 40th annual Western Apicultural Society (WAS) conference, set Sept. 5-8 at the University of California, Davis, its birthplace. The non-profit educational organization, geared for small-scale beekeepers in the western United States or those just interested in bees, is headed by president Eric Mussen, Extension apiculturist emeritus, of UC Davis.

The conference takes place in the Activities and Recreation Center (ARC) and also will include tours to the Department of Entomology and Nematology's Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility and its adjacent Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, as well as sojourns to Woodland to see the Mann Lake LTD facility (beekeeping supplies), and Z Specialty Food.

"The speakers are from throughout the country and also from Canada," Mussen says.  Among the speakers: Kim Flottum of Medina, Ohio, editor of Bee Culture; Les Crowder of Austin, Texas, author of Top-Bar Beekeeping; Gene Brandi of Los Banos, president of the American Beekeeping Federation; Larry Connor of Kalamazoo, Mich., author and beekeeper; Rod Scarlett, executive director, Canadian Honey Council, and Slava Strogolov, chief executive officer of Strong Microbials Inc., Milwaukee.

UC Davis will be well represented, Mussen points out, noting that "we have widespread and varied expertise covering everything from honey bees and native bees to honey tasting and bee gardening."

Four UC Davis faculty members will address the crowd on Thursday morning, Sept. 7:

• Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño will speak on “Impact of Varroa on Honey Bee Reproductive Castes): Where Will the Research Lead Us?” at at 8:30 a.m. The three reproductive castes are the queen and worker bee (female), and drone (male).
• Associate professor Brian Johnson will speak on “Geographical Distribution of Africanized Bees in California” 9 a.m.,  He will show “the results of a genotyping study of bees caught from across California showing the current distribution of Africanized Honey Bees in our state."
• Distinguished emeritus professor Robbin Thorp, a native pollinator specialist, will discuss “Life Cycles of Commonly Encountered Native Bee Genera" at 10:30 a.m.  He is the co-author of Bumble Bees of North America: an Identification Guide and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists.
• Professor Neal Williams, a pollination ecologist, will discuss “Known and Potential of Native Bees in Crop Pollination” at 11 a.m.

It's good to see native bees sharing space with honey bees at the conference and to see Neal Williams and Robbin Thorp in the line-up.  Williams, promoted to full professor this year, will discuss his applied research, which, he explains, "addresses the integration of wild and managed bees for pollination of diverse agricultural crops including seed production, row crops and orchards." Williams adds: "This research addresses as series inter-related questions. Under what contexts, in terms of local management and landscape context, can native pollinators provide sufficient pollination for different crops? How can we enhance habitat and diversify agricultural systems to promote managed and wild bees? Do pollinators like honey bees and wild bees interact in ways to increase the overall effectiveness of crop pollination? The answers to these questions helps alleviate the stress placed on honey bees and also informs ways to more sustainably manage agricultural systems to promote biodiversity and production."

Robbin Thorp, an international expert on bumble bees and other native bees, retired from UC Davis in 1994 after 30 years of teaching entomology and pollination biology courses and conducting research on bees as pollinators of crop plants. "The primary focus was on honey bees in almond, but I also studied native bees as pollinators of various crops and in natural ecosystems such as vernal pools," he says. Since retirement, he continues to conduct research, primarily on native bees and to do outreach education on bees. He is  currently teaching at The Bee Course, a 10-day workshop sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and held every year in the Southwestern Research Station, Portal, Ariz.  One of the longtime faculty, he has annually taught at the Bee Course since 2002.

The WAS conference also will feature a trip on Thursday afternoon, Sept. 7 to the UC Davis bee biology facility, appropriately located on Bee Biology Road. That's when several UC Davis faculty or staff, along with beekeeper/scientist Randy Oliver of Grass Valley, will staff a total of five education stations from 1 to 4 p.m. at either the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility or the bee garden. Staff research associate Bernardo Niño will discuss various beehive iterations; Randy Oliver will cover how to determine various levels of nosema and varroa infestations; Brian Johnson will explain how to prepare honey bees for the molecular study of Africanized honey bees; and Christine Casey, staff manager of the department's half-acre Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, will discuss what to plant in a bee garden and how to maintain it. 

In addition, Casey will lead a tour of the haven at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 6. “The haven is a unique outdoor museum designed to educate visitors about bees and the plants that support them," Casey says. "Tour participants will see some of our 85 bee and 200 plant species, learn about our outreach and research programs, and gain ideas for their own bee gardens."

On Friday, Sept. 8, Extension apiculturist emeritus Eric Mussen will moderate a panel on “Pesticide Toxicity Testing with Adult and Immature Honey Bees.” The panel will convene at 9:15 a.m. Then at 1:30 on Friday, assistant professor Rachel Vannette of UC Davis will discuss “Variation in Nectar Quality Influence Pollinator Foraging." She studies floral nectar chemistry and microbiology and examines how these characteristics of flowers mediate interactions between plants and pollinators

Other UC Davis highlights involve honey tasting and 40-year-old memories:

Honey Tasting: Amina Harris, director of the Honey and Pollination Center at the Robert Mondavi Institute of Wine and Food Science, UC Davis, will lead a moderated honey tasting at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 6.  The event is titled “Taste the Honey Flavors of the West: How Understanding the Nuances of your Honey Can Help You Market your Perfect Sweet.” Said Harris: "Basically, I plan to discuss the diversity and life styles of non-Apis bees to show how different most are from honey bees."

40-Year-Old Memories: The founders of WAS will reminisce on "how it all began" from 8:45 to 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 6. The organization, founded at UC Davis, was the brainchild of Norm Gary, then professor of apiculture (now emeritus), who served as the founding WAS president. Assisting him were Eric Mussen, then an Extension apiculturist, who accepted the office of vice president; and postdoctoral fellow Becky Westerdahl, now the Extension nematologist in the department, elected secretary-treasurer.

More information on the conference, including the complete schedule, is available from the WAS website or contact Eric Mussen at ecmussen@ucdavis.edu. Registration is underway at http://www.westernapiculturalsociety.org/2017-conference-registration/

If you attend the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house from 1 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 27, you'll learn all about bark beetles but you probably won't recognize the facility.

It will be "Bark Beetle Forest Central," says Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator.

Think trees!

The old saying "You Can't See the Forest for the Trees" will basically turn into "You Can't See the Bohart for the Trees."

Steve Seybold, a research entomologist with the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, Davis, and a lecturer with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will present the  open house, “Bark Beetles and Trees, Forest Health in California."  The event is free and open to the public. The museum is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.

“As of last winter, bark beetles had killed 102 million trees in California during the last drought period,” said Seybold, a Davis resident who holds a doctorate in entomology from UC Berkeley and a bachelor of science degree in forestry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Tree mortality in the western USA over the past 15 years caused by native bark beetles exceeded 21 million hectares, which surpasses all other disturbances, including fire.”

Seybold is known for his pioneering research on the walnut twig beetle, Pityophthorus juglandis, associated with widespread mortality of black walnut in the western United States.

Said Seybold: “We are planning to have a series of four to five ‘stations' that illustrate the mass attack of native bark beetles on pine and fir trees; the biology and impact of invasive species of bark beetles and woodborers; and the flight trapping and chemical ecology of bark beetles.  We are also planning some craft activities for kids that involve the gallery patterns that bark beetles etch on wood during their life cycles.”

They will be joined by local environmental artist  Ann Savageau, a mixed-media artist whose work includes creating sculptures from wood with gallery patterns on it. Savageau, who retired as a professor of design from UC Davis in 2002, is now a full-time artist. She describes her work as dealing with :the natural world, human culture and their intersections."

Seybold's scientific crew at the Bohart Museum on Sunday will include be Yigen Chen, former research entomologist with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and now with Gallo Wines in Modesto, Jackson Audley and Corwin Parker, UC Davis entomologist graduate students; Irene Lona, graduate student at California State University, Chico; Megan Siefker, UC Davis junior specialist; and  Crystal Homicz, UC Davis, undergraduate student.

Numerous Bohart Museum scientists and volunteers also will participate. “We'll have a family craft project that will deal with the beetle gallery,” Yang said.

The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis professor of entomology, is a world-renowned insect museum that houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It also maintains a live “petting zoo,” featuring walking sticks, Madagascar hissing cockroaches and tarantulas. A gift shop, open year around, offers T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy. 

The Bohart Museum's regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. The museum is closed to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and on major holidays. Admission is free. 

More information on the Bohart Museum is available by contacting (530) 752-0493 or bmuseum@ucdavis.edu. The website is http://bohart.ucdavis.edu/