- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It happened so quickly.
The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) fluttered to the lantana for a sip of nectar when the unexpected happened.
A praying mantis, lying in wait, leaped high and grabbed it by its wings.
Unable to fly, the monarch struggled to right itself. The praying mantis kept its viselike grip.
Caught.
At the time, I was focusing on the butterfly and didn't see the predator. When I saw the butterfly struggling, I walked over to it and lifted it out of the lantana, only to find a praying mantis attached to it.
The butterfly did not make it. The praying mantis, a female about to lay eggs, did. She will be shown at the Bohart Museum of Entomology's open house on Saturday, Sept. 21 from 1 to 4 p.m. and then released.
Theme of the Bohart open house is "Live at the Bohart!" Live? That's because the open house will feature live insects, such as cabbage white and Gulf Fritillary butterflies, Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks, a rose-haired tarantula and a “Harry Potter bug,” which is an amblypygid commonly known as a whip spider or tailless whip scorpion.
The Bohart, located on the UC Davis campus in Room 1124 of Academic Surge on Crocker Lane, formerly California Drive, is home to nearly eight million insect specimens, collected throughout the world.
At the open house, museum officials will tell you how to rear a cabbage white butterfly and other butterflies, such as Gulf Fritllaries. You can talk insects with director Lynn Kimsey; senior museum scientist Steve Heydon; public education/outreach coordinator Tabatha Yang, and others. The gift shop will be open for the purchase of t-shirts, jewelry, posters, books, insect nets and other items.
As for the praying mantis, on Saturday she will be freed to catch more prey.
Let's hope it is a cabbage white instead of a monarch.
/span>- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Love is where you find it.
And sometimes you find it in a bean field.
Take the UC Dry Bean Field Day on Sept. 5 at UC Davis. As researchers, growers, UC Cooperative Extension personnel, industry representatives and other interested personnel fanned out in the bean fields west of the central campus, they may not have noticed the red among the green.
Two lady beetles, aka ladybugs, were doing what comes naturally.
We need more beneficial insects!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
A miss is as good as a mile...or a smile.
The Buckeye (Junonia coenia) is a striking butterfly patterned with eyespots and white bars. We saw one today nectaring on sedum, but with chunks of a wing missing. Perhaps a bird or a praying mantis tried to grab it. It narrowly escaped predation.
A lucky day.
It's quite a common butterfly, as common as it is recognizable.
The Buckeye "is found in southern Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia and all parts of the United States, except the Northwest," according to Wikpedia. It's also found throughout Central America and Colombia.
"The Buckeye breeds on plants containing bitter iridoid glycosides, including plantains (Plantago, especially P. lanceolata), various Scrophulariaceae (especially Fluellin, Kickxia), and Lippia (Lippia or Phyla nodiflora)," says butterfly expert Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, on his website. "The spiny, black-and-white caterpillar has a bright orange head. Its behavior suggests its diet makes it virtually immune to vertebrate predation, but the pupa and adult are quite edible."
Well, this is one adult that got away.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Published by Wicwas Press of Kalamazoo, Mich., it doubles as a university textbook and a "how-to" resource for beekeepers. It's also a great book for those interested in learning more about honey bees and their biology and behavior.
We first met Caron and Connor at a Western Apicultural Society meeting in 2009 in Healdburg, Calif. Caron holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University, and Connor received his doctorate in entomology from Michigan State University. At the time Caron was a professor/Extension entomologist with the University of Delaware. He is now retired and living in Oregon.
Connor's credentials include Extension entomologist at The Ohio State University, president of Genetic Systems, Inc. in Labelle Fla., a bee breeding firm; and owner/operator of Beekeeping Education Service and Wicwas Press. A prolific author, he's published many books and articles.
Both are on the "bee speakers' circuit," so to speak. They know bees!
Their 20-chapter book delves into such topics as sociality, honey bee anatomy, dance language communication, pheromone communication, foraging and bee botany, the honey harvest, pollination, bee mites, and diseases and pests, to name a few.
Yes, the book touches on bee stings. (As an aside, isn't it a shame that when many people think of "honey bees," they think first of "stings," rather than pollination, bee products and amazing superorganism? For beekeepers, stings just come with the territory.)
"Beekeepers often become complacent about bee stings; they are a normal occurrence of keeping bee colonies," Caron/Connor write. "With an increase in the number of stings, beekeepers become less reactive to the stings. They are a fact of life; something to tolerate as a beekeeper."
Caron/Conner not only recommend that you grab the smoker and puff smoke on the sting site but "Withdraw from the open colony and rub or wash the site with water to remove the chemical odor."
How to relive the pain? Personally, I use a meat tenderizer. Write Caron/Connor: "Apply an over-the counter sting relief remedy or a cool compress, ice, mud, or meat tenderizer to provide some relief."
The bee sting photo (taken by yours truly and published in the Caron/Conner book) shows a Carniolan bee owned by bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey, stinging Eric Mussen. What you see is the bee's abdominal tissue as it tries to pull away. At the time, we were walking through the apiary at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis, and the bee became defensive. "Kathy, get your camera, ready," Mussen said. "The bee's going to sting me."
Usually a bee sting is a clean break.
Speaking of breaks, bee scientists and beekeepers are gearing up for the next Western Apicultural Society meeting, to be held Oct. 16-19 in Santa Fe, N.M.
Mussen, a founder and five-time president of the organization, says the organization was "designed specifically to meet the educational needs of beekeepers from the states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming; the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and the Yukon; and the states of northern Mexico."
Membership, however, is open to all interested persons--beekeepers and non-beekeepers alike.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's critical issue.
Mussen, an Extension apiculturist based at the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology since 1976, says malnutrition is a major factor in the declining bee population. That, along with pesticides, pests, diseases and stress.
"You, no doubt, have lost track of how many times I have stated that malnutrition is a leading factor in our unacceptable annual bee colony loss numbers," Mussen writes in the latest edition of his bimonthly newsletter, from the UC Apiaries, available free on his website.
"I have also stated innummerable times that our synthesized bee diets just cannot match the value of nutrients obtained by bees from a mixture of quality pollens. My concern has been that although we have a very good idea of the protein requirements for honey bees, the rations of essential amino acids honey bees require, and their required vitamins and minerals, etc., we still cannot feed bees on our best diets and keep them alive more than two months in confinement."
"Thus, we are missing some very critical components in our synthesized diets. If we could find those components, could we formulate a diet that would sustain bees in a healthy condition during 'feedlot beekeeping'?"
Mussen touches on a recent study that shows a component in honey, p-coumarin, stimulates "the honey bee immune system to work better."
However, it's not the honey that's doing this.
"Actually," Mussen says, "that chemical is a contaminant of honey that comes from pollen grains that are mixed into the honey during the bees' processing cycle. Thus, the bees need only to consume the pollen to obtain the desired results. How many other minor chemicals are there in pollens that are so useful to honey bee health?"
You'll want to read what he says about floral pollens containing microbes. "If these microbes are really so important to the nutritional needs of honey bees, what are we doing when we introduce antibiotics and fungicides into the system?"
Bottom line: we need more research to see what's going on with pesticide exposures and reduced microbial levels.
Or as Mussen says: "As researchers continue to try to improve upon our supplemental bee feeds, they have to consider the possibility of inoculating a semisold formulation of the diet with fresh pollen and stored pollen so that a natural microbial complex can do its things and make the food appropriately fit for consumption by honey bees."