The California Honey Festival is the place to "bee" on Saturday, May 6 in downtown Woodland.

The festival, free and family friendly, takes place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.  The event celebrates the importance of bees, and promotes honey and honey bees and their products. Last year it drew a crowd of 40,000, 

UC Davis faculty are among those scheduled to deliver 20-minute talks on the Speakers' Stage, located just west of First Street. The list of speakers includes:

10:30 a.m.: Pollination ecologist and professor Neal Williams, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, who will discuss "Native Bees and their Conservation"

11 a.m.: Kitty Bolte, GATEways horticulturist, UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, "Planting Your Garden to be a Welcoming Space for Pollinators"  

12 noon: Amina Harris,  director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, and co-owner of Z Food Specialty and The HIVE, Woodland, "Let's Learn to Taste Honey."

1 p.m.: Wendy Mather, co-program manager of the California Master Beekeeper Program (CAMPB), "So, You Want to Be a Beekeeper?" 

1:30 p.m.: Jean-Philippe Marelli, senior director of Integrated Pest Management for Mars Wrigley Confectionery (also a journey level master beekeeper and Melipona beekeeper in Brazil), "Stingless Bees: The Amazing World of Melipona Bees"

2 p.m.: Cooperative Extension apiculturist/associate professor Elina Lastro Niño of Entomology and Nematology, and director of the California Master Beekeeper Program (CAMPB), "What Our Bee Research Is Teaching Us."

2:30 p.m.: Sanmu "Samtso" Caoji, a 2022-23 Hubert Humphrey fellow, and founder of the Shangri-la Gyalthang Academy, and CEO of the Cultural Information Consulting Company, "Empowering Women to Become Beekeepers and Bread Winners for Their Families While Keeping Bees in the Wild"

3 p.m.: Rachel Davis, coordinator of Bee City USA Woodland and chair of Bee Campus USA UC Davis (and GATEways Horticulturist for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden), "Woodland Is a Bee City; UC Davis Is a Bee City--What This Means to Our Communities"

UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology communications specialist Kathy Keatley Garvey will provide a background slide show of images of honey bees and native bees.

This will be the Amina Harris' last California Honey Festival as director of the Honey and Pollination Center, which she founded in 2012. The co-owner of Z Food Specialty and The HIVE, Woodland,  Harris will retire from UC Davis at the end of June. She co-founded the California Honey Festival in 2017 with the City of Woodland. 

The festival is both educational and entertaining. At her annual booth, Harris explains what the honey flavor wheel is and invites the crowd to sample honey varietals. Attendees can also check out the  bee observation hives, watch cooking demonstrations and kids' shows, taste mead and other alcoholic drinks (if of age) and learn about bees from beekeepers and bee scientists. Vendors, offering various products and food, will line the streets.

The UC Davis-based California Master Beekeeper Program,  founded in 2016 by Niño,  provides a program of learning, teaching, research, and public service. They offer comprehensive, science-based information about honey bees and honey bee health.  Since 2016, the organization has donated 32,000 hours of volunteer time and served 186,630 individuals in education, outreach and beekeeping mentorship. Read more about their classes and their work on their website.

Following the California Honey Festival, an after-party will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. at The HIVE Tasting Room and Kitchen, 1221 Harter Ave., Woodland.  It will feature pollinator-inspired food, drinks, and dancing to the music of Joy and Madness, an 8-piece soul and funk group.  Tickets are $20 and will benefit the California Master Beekeeper Program. "Each ticket includes entry to win a bountiful Yolo County food and drink basket (value $500)," Harris said.  More information is on this website.

African trypanosomiasis, also called sleeping sickness, is a disease caused by a parasite. People can get this parasite when an infected Tsetse fly bites them. Symptoms include fatigue, high fever, headaches, and muscle aches. If the disease is not treated, it can cause death.--Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Enter John Hargrove, director emeritus of the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis.

He will present a UC Davis Entomology and Nematology seminar on "Tsetse, Trypanosomiasis, and Climate Change: What Can We Learn from Field Data Collected in the Zambezi Valley of Zimbabwe?" at 4:10 p.m. Wednesday, May 3 in 122 Briggs Hall.  

His seminar also will be on Zoom:
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672.

Host is UC Davis distinguished professor James R. Carey, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

"Insect vectors attract small fractions of the funding spent on studying and controlling the diseases they transmit," Hargrove says in his abstract. "Emphasis on vector studies for tsetse (Glossina spp) have, however, resulted in several novel vector and disease control options. Experiments carried out over the past 60 years at Rekomitjie Research Station in the Zambezi Valley of Zimbabwe, together with daily meteorological readings, provide a platform for studying the effects of climate change on the population dynamics of tsetse species occurring around Rekomitjie. Rates of pupal production and development, of abortion rates and of mortality among immature and adult stages of the flies are all highly correlated with temperature. Methods used to estimate such relationships in the field will be discussed and the relationships are used in explaining the sudden collapse in tsetse populations during the past decade, consequent on significant increases in temperature, particularly in the hot dry season."

Hargrove, associated with the International Clinics on Infectious Disease Dynamics and Data Program (ICI3D), is a faculty member with the Clinic on Meaningful Modeling of Epidemiological Data (MMED) and the Clinic on Dynamical Approaches to Infectious Disease Data (DAIDD). He is a senior research fellow for the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa, and a professor emeritus of mathematical sciences at Stellenbosch University. 

Hargrove served as the inaugural director of the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (SACEMA). The precursors for MMED and DAIDD were launched in 2006 at the beginning of his directorship; he has been involved continuously as an instructor in the program since, according to his biography on ICI3D. Over the past nearly 50 years, Hargrove has combined fieldwork and mathematical epidemiology to understand the population dynamics and control of tsetse flies, the vectors of human African Trypanosomiasis.

He focuses his current research on the modelling population dynamics, with a particular focus on how increasing temperatures in Africa will affect tsetse distribution. This work involves improving estimation of mortality in adult and immature stages of the fly. Since 1999, he has also focused on the analysis and modelling of data in the world of HIV. Current interest are in improving the use of biomarkers for the accurate estimation of HIV incidence.

He holds a bachelor's degree in zoology (1968) from the University of Oxford; a master's degree in biomathematics  (1981) from UCLA, and a doctorate in insect physiology (1973) from the University of London.

Department seminar coordinator is urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke,  assistant professor.   For technical issues regarding Zoom connections, she may be reached at ekmeineke@ucdavis.edu. (See complete list of spring seminars.)

Resources: 
SERVIR--From Space to Tsetse Fly 
World Health Organization: Trypanosomiasis (Human African Sleeping Sickness)

Call it “The Battle Over a Tree Hollow."

Feral bees have occupied—and abandoned—a sycamore tree cavity in a Vacaville neighborhood for at least two decades. They occupy it in the spring, summer and fall, and then the colony either absconds or dies back in the winter. 

When this winter proved exceptionally cold and rainy, a clever squirrel moved in. 

A place to stay warm. A perfect sleepy hollow.

Then in early April, scout bees from a spring swarm begin circling the tree. Wait! There's an intruder inside.

Squirrel: "Occupied! No vacancy!"

Bees: "Out, it's ours!” 

Squirrel: “Finders, keepers! I was here first!” 

Bees: “But it's ours! This is our bee tree!”

Cars speed by.  Residents trudge by with leashed dogs. Birds chirp. A hound bays uproariously.  The sleepy squirrel pokes his head out occasionally as if to ask “What's all the ruckus about? Can't a squirrel get some sleep?” 

More bees buzz around his head.

“Occupied!” Mr. Squirrel shouts again. “No vacancy!” 

The score: Squirrel: 1. Bees: 0.

Then one mid-April day, the tenant vanishes. 

The bees quickly move in. Call it a "hollow victory" for the bees.

The score: Bees: 1. Squirrel, O.

Now a queen bee is busily laying eggs. The workers are performing their age-related duties: nurse maids, nannies, royal attendants, builders, architects, foragers, dancers, honey tenders, pollen packers, propolis or "glue" specialists, air conditioning and heating technicians, undertakers, and guards.

Who was it who said "Everything works if you let it?" The American rock band, Cheap Trick. 

So true.

Make way for the beetles!

Lady beetles, green fruit beetle larvae, and stick-on bug tattoos drew inquisitive and appreciative crowds when the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM) staffed an informational booth at Briggs Hall during the 109th annual UC Davis Picnic Day.

Forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey and doctoral student Grace Horne of the Emily Meineke lab,  UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, chaired the department's Picnic Day Committee. (See 'What's a Picnic Without Bugs?)

Lady beetles?

UC IPM gave away 2000 lady beetles, aka ladybugs, for visitors to release in their gardens. These beneficial insects gobble up aphids and other soft-bodied insects. A single beetle can eat as many as 50 aphids a day, scientists say.

Karey Windbiel-Rojas, associate director for Urban and Community IPM/Area IPM Advisor, said attendees asked scores of questions. "Questions were quite varied but those that stood out were how to control: termites, aphids, caterpillars, ants, carpet beetles, and rats," she said.

Green fruit beetles?

Another popular draw: Green fruit beetle larvae. "They were fun for people to get hands-on with and gave us the chance to talk to people about the difference between look alike scarab beetle larvae," Windbiel-Rojas wrote in an email. "Japanese beetles (which are not established in California), masked chafer beetles (their grubs ARE pests in raised garden beds and lawns) and green fruit beetles (which are not really pests but people sometimes see them in compost)."

"The green fruit beetle (scarab, family Scarabaeidae), is also called a fig eater beetle, green fig beetle, or western green June beetle," according to the UC IPM website. "The adults are an occasional pest of ripe fruits. Adults can fly a relatively long distance and are highly attracted to ripe fruit and the odors of manure and fermenting fruit."

Tattoos?

 UC IPM gave away 500 stick-on (temporary) tattoos, including images of the Chinese red-headed centipede (Scolopendra subspinipes mutilans), tarantula hawk (Pepsis heros) and the hickory horned devil caterpillar of a regal moth (Citheronia regalis). They were all gone within a few hours. "Next year we plan to order 1000," Windbiel-Rojas said. Staffing the educational table that included the tattoos were her two sons, Diego, a freshman at McClatchy High School in Sacramento,  and Spencer, a seventh grader at Sutter Middle School in Sacramento. As attendees examined and applied the tattoos, the youths talked about invasive pests and the importance of not moving firewood to spread pests.

Meanwhile, at the entrance to Briggs Hall, it was "beetle mania" as members of the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association kept busy selling their beetle t-shirts, the most popular of their insect-themed t-shirts.