- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Part of the proceeds will benefit the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center and the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis.
Amina Harris, director of the Honey and Pollination Center and co-owner of Z Specialty Food, will be leading a guided honey tasting at noon each day.
Harris, who co-owns the business with husband Ishai Zeldner and son Josh Zeldner, says the event will include “so many honeys—about 30. New varietals include Arizona Cactus Blossom, California Purple Vetch, Toyon, Hawaiian Wildflower, Raspberry, and Midwestern Basswood."
In addition, the event will showcase mead (honey wine), honey beer, honey fruit spreads, honey in the straw, chocolate nut spreads, olive oil and other foods. There also will be children's activities, tours, giveways, and live music by the Jonny Gold Trio of Davis.
Harris will be offering the Honey Aroma and Flavor Wheel for sale, with proceeds benefitting the Honey and Pollination Center and the Laidlaw facility.
Z Specialty Food is home to Moon Shine Trading Company, Island of the Moon Apiaries, and Cowboy Caviar. Moon Shine Trading packs more than 20 varietal honeys and other gourmet foods.
Some of the rare honeys that are quite popular are coriander and pomegranate, said Ishai Zeldner, the company's founder. This year Z Specialty Food partnered with Woodland's Blue Note Brewing Company to develop a pomegranate honey called "Local Buzz." It, too, will be available for tasting at the open house.
More information on the public event is available on the website, http://www.zspecialtyfood.com, or call (530) 668-0660. The email is tasty@zspecialtyfood.com.
Z Specialty Food will be among the sponsors at the 40th annual Western Apicultural Society (WAS) conference, set Sept. 5-8, 2017 at Davis. Conference participants will tour the Woodland business. WAS was founded by UC Davis bee specialists headquartered at the Laidlaw facility.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The family friendly event, free and open to the public, will take place in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.
Folks are encouraged to bring in pests they find in the home, including cockroaches, carpet beetles, termites, flies/fruit flies, cellar spiders, earwigs, house centipedes and pantry pests. Entomologists will identify the pests and explain more about them.
All pests are "fair game" except for parasites. Those come later: on Jan. 22, the Bohart Museum is planning an open house themed “Parasite Palooza: Botflies, Fleas and Mites, Oh My!”
At the Nov. 19th open house, the Bohart will showcase live insects, including Indian meal moths, clothes moths, and earwigs, as well as specimens.
For the arts and crafts activity, UC Davis senior entomology major Karissa Merritt has drawn a sawtoothed grain beetle and cigarette beetle and other pests, for children to color and/or adorn with grains of rice and other materials.
The open house will feature a number of stuffed animals in its gift shop, including lice, ants, tardigrades, bed bugs and mosquitoes. A zippered monarch butterfly, illustrating caterpillar, chrysalis and adult stages, is another new addition. Also new: handmade insect collection boxes by Bohart Museum associate and entomologist Jeff Smith, who curates the butterfly and moth collection.
One of the most unique gifts: With a donation to the Bohart BioLegacy Program, donors can name a newly discovered and described insect after a loved one.
The gift shop, open year around, is filled with T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy. Among the books:
- California Bees and Blooms and Bumble Bees of North America, both co-authored by Robbin Thorp, UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology and a Bohart assocaiate
- Story of the Dogface Butterfly by Bohart associates: entomologist Fran Keller, naturalist and photographer Greg Kareofelas and artist Laine Bauer. The dogface butterfly is the state insect.
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. The 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.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
You know, the ones with six, eight or more legs?
Now you can find out all about them. And maybe, just maybe, you can kick them out.
The Bohart Museum of Entomology will host an open house, “Uninvited Guests: Common Pests Found in the Home” from 1 to 4 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 19 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. The family friendly event is free and open to the public. A children's arts and crafts activity, zeroing in on uninvited guests in the home, will also take place.
“People attending can bring samples of anything they find in their pantries or their closets,” said Tabatha Yang, education and public outreach coordinator.
The pests can include cockroaches, carpet beetles, termites, flies/fruit flies, cellar spiders, earwigs, house centipedes, and pantry pests, such as moths and beetles that invade flour and cornmeal.
“We are not addressing the parasites,” she said. “We have a special day for that on Jan. 22 when the theme is “Parasite Palooza: Botflies, Fleas and Mites, Oh My!”
Ever wondered about those pantry pests with such names as confused flour beetle (Tribolium confusum) and cigarette beetle (Lasioderma serricorne)? You may be as confused as the flour beetle as how to get rid of it. And you probably don't allow cigarettes in your house, so why do you allow the cigarette beetle? (Read more about pantry pests on the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM) website.
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, includes T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy. Other items include stuffed animals: monarchs, lice, mosquitoes and tardigrades.
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/
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Then it happened. The three monarchs caterpillars that we'd been rearing in our indoor butterfly habitat, pupated, forming those familiar, awe-inspiring jade-green chrysalids. Soon three monarchs--two males and a female--eclosed.
Should they go? Or should they stay?
The first monarch, a male, eclosed on Tuesday, Nov. 8, Election Day. What to do? Wait for the other two to eclose and drive them all to Santa Cruz—since we're going there any way on Monday, Nov. 14-- or release him now? Decisions, decisions, decisions.
An inner voice argued with me.
Me: “Release him. Let him be a butterfly.”
Inner Voice: “If we transport him there, he'll have a better chance of survival. It's November and pretty late in the migratory season for him to make that 113-mile journey. He can join the cluster of 800 to 1000 already there, overwintering high and happily in the eucalyptus trees, and then next February, he'll head inland.”
Me: “No. Release him. He's antsy. He wants out. Besides, how do you know if wants to go to Santa Cruz? Maybe that's not on his itinerary!”
So off went Butterfly No. 1, soaring 80 feet high into the air. He never looked back.
Then a female eclosed on Thursday, Nov. 10 and a male on Friday, Nov. 11, Veterans' Day. The weather report indicated rain within the next few days. Release them or drive them to Santa Cruz?
Me: “Well, since we're going there any way on Nov. 14, and the monarch population is declining, why not take these two to Santa Cruz?”
Inner Voice: “Yes! Why not?”
So off we went, Don, Marilyn, Jim, yours truly and the two monarchs, Danaus plexippus, well fed and roosting comfortably in their mesh butterfly habitat.
We left Fairfield mid-morning on Nov. 14, and after a 90-minute trip, arrived at Natural Bridges around noon. It was a picture-perfect autumn day, a day to treasure, with temperatures at 60 degrees and rising. And, there we were, standing in the monarch sanctuary, in awe of a thousand tiny butterflies silently clustering in the towering eucalyptus trees. From 80 feet below, the drab-graylike clusters looked ever so much like dead leaves. When the clusters broke in the warmth of the sun, the sanctuary took on a life—and color--of its own. The iconic orange, black and white butterflies glided and soared above us in numbers that folks rarely see.
There is strength in numbers. Color, too.
We found a secure place, away from the crowd, to release the Vacaville born-and-reared monarchs. The female went first, fluttering delicately out of Marilyn's hand to join the others. The male lingered several minutes on her finger, and then he, too, departed, soaring high.
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose…
Poet Gertrude Stein once described Oakland as: “There is no there there.”
But in monarch overwintering sites in Santa Cruz, there is. There is a "there" when “they're there.”
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Let's hear it for the honey bees.
Right now they're scrambling to gather nectar and pollen from the blanket flower, Gaillardia. You could say they're blanketing the flower. When resources are scarce in the fall, the blanket flower, in the sunflower family Asteraceae, draws them in. The flower reminds us of Native American Indians' brightly colored and patterned blankets.
Now let's hear it for the California State Beekeepers' Association (CSBA). They're delivering and gathering knowledge at their annual conference, being held Tuesday, Nov. 15 through Wednesday, Nov. 17 in the Kona Kai Resort and Spa, San Diego. They'll discuss the latest research, trade ideas with fellow beekeepers (note that "beekeepers" are "keepers") and they'll explore some of the innovative products at their trade show, a spokesperson said.
Among the speakers are two UC Davis-affiliated specialists: Extension apiculturist Elina Niño, who will key in on the research underway at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, and Extension apiculturist emeritus Eric Mussen, who will offer a glimpse of the present, past and future of beekeeping.
Niño's research interests encompass basic and applied approaches to understanding and improving honey bee health and particularly honey bee queen health. Ongoing research projects include understanding the synergistic effects of pesticides on queen health and adult workers in order to improve beekeeping management practice, as well as testing novel biopesticides for efficacy against varroa mites. Keep up with the Niño lab on its Facebook page. And keep up with CSBA on its Facebook page.
Mussen, who retired in 2014 after 38 years of service--but maintains an office in Briggs Hall--is guaranteed to add some humor to his talk. How do we know? We saw his PowerPoint before he left Davis for San Diego. Hint: replace "dog" food with "bee" food. And the insect in his last slide doesn't look anything like the bee we know and love.
In a way, the CSBA is like the matched pair of honey bees below. There are four bees. If you think about the purposes of the CSBA, each bee can be matched with one of those purposes:
- to educate the public about the beneficial aspects of honey bees
- advance research beneficial to beekeeping practices
- provide a forum for cooperation among beekeepers, and
- to support the economic and political viability of the beekeeping industry.
It's all about "bee-ing" there for the bees.