- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
This is Xylocopa varipuncta, also known as "the teddy bear bee."
It's a green-eyed blond and as fuzzy as any teddy bear you'll ever have the pleasure of meeting. Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, calls them "teddy bear bees" and the name has stuck. (And being "boy bees," they cannot sting. See close-up photo on Bug Squad.)
Scampavia, who is studying how farming practices affect bee nesting for her doctorate in entomology, recently won the top graduate student poster award at the first-ever UC Davis Bee Symposium, and provided the popular “Pollinator Pavilion” at the UC Davis Picnic Day.
She urges us to all pitch in and protect the pollinators. Good advice.
Scampavia, who studies with major professors Neal Williams and Ed Lewis of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and anticipates receiving her Ph.D. in 2016, lists three ways to “save the pollinators."
1. Provide food: Plant a variety of trees, shrubs and annual flower with blooms that differ in size, shape, color and flowering time. Planting native milkweeds also can help support monarch butterfly populations. Hummingbird and butterfly feeders can also provide additional food sources, but make sure to clean and disinfect your feeders regularly, as they can accumulate toxic fungi.
2. Provide homes: Bees can be limited by food or nesting opportunities. Native bees are usually not aggressive and unlikely to sting. A patch of bare soil can provide valuable nest sites for soil-nesting bees, particularly if the soil is loose and slightly damp. A dead stump or log, or shrubs with hollow stems, such as raspberry or elderberry, can also provide nests for cavity-nesting bees. “You can also make or order a ‘bee condo,' or a block of wood with holes of varying diameter,” she says. “Line these holes with paper tubes to make them easy to clean between years. Some bee species line their nests with rose, wisteria or fuzzy plants such as lamb's ear leaves, so growing these plants can help these bees, too.”
3. Provide pesticide shelters. As much as possible, try to reduce pesticide use in your garden, or use less toxic pesticides, such as soap sand oils. If you spray, do so when pollinators are not active--after dusk to before dawn. Try to avoid spraying flowers directly. Create a pesticide-free source of water and mud for bees and butterflies, such as a dripping faucet or a bird.
Her display showcased numerous live pollinators, including bees, butterflies and flies. She also drew in the crowds with informational posters on pollinators. The posters detailed how individuals can help support healthy pollinator populations.
Visitors could walk inside the zipped enclosure and be one-on-one with the pollinators, including the monarchs, blue orchard bees, and syprhid flies. Many took photos of the monarchs on their hands or arms. Younger visitors were encouraged to practice observing pollinators by filling out a data sheet counting the number of each type of pollinator they saw.
Scampavia recently won the top prize at the Bee Symposium with her poster, “Farming Practices Affect Nest Site Selection of Native Ground Nesting Bees.”
"Rei is mutli-talented: she is able to both conduct high quality research and communicate information about pollinators in engaging and effective ways," said Katharina Ullmann who holds a doctorate in entomology from UC Davis (Neal Williams lab) and is now a crop pollination specialist for the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. "Anyone who saw her award-winning poster at the Bee Symposium or who experience the pollinator pavilion at Picnic day knows that pollinators are lucky to have Rei working for them!"
Scampavia received her bachelor's degree in biology in 2008 from Mills College, Oakland. She began her doctoral studies at UC Davis in 2011. She earlier served as a biological science technician (plants) for the U.S. Forest Service, Groveland, Calif., and ; a research consultant for BMP Ecosciences in San Francisco.
Active in the Entomological Society of America (ESA), Scampavia was a member of the 2014 UC Davis Student Debate Team that won first place in the nationals. She also was a member of the 2013 UC Davis Linnaean Games Team that won second at the annual meeting of the Pacific Branch of ESA.
If you want to meet Rei Scampavia and "talk bees," she'll be volunteering at the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven open house from 5:30 to 7 p.m., Friday, June 19. The haven, managed by staff director Chris Casey and faculty director Elina Niño, Extension apiculturist, is located on Bee Biology Road, next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, west of the central campus.
The half-acre bee garden, operated by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is filled with blooms, bees and butterflies! The open house, free and open to the public, will include bee observation and identification, honey tasting, sales of native bee houses to support the haven, and information about low-water plants.
The garden is open to the public daily from dawn to dusk.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Margaret “Rei” Scampavia, a doctoral candidate who studies with major professors Neal Williams and Edwin Lewis of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, won first place for her research poster at the recent UC Davis Bee Symposium, held in the Robert Mondavi Center for Wine and Food Science.
Scampavia's poster, “Farming Practices Affect Nest Site Selection of Native Ground Nesting Bees,” won her the $1500 grand prize. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation generously provided the funding.
Two other graduate students in the Neal Williams' lab won second and third place. Jennifer Van Wyk placed second for her poster on “Wet Meadow Restoration Buffers the Impact of Climate Change: Pollinator Resilience During the California Drought” and Leslie Saul-Gershenz, who also studies with professor Steve Nadler, placed third for her poster on “Native Bee Parasite Shows Multitrait, Host Specific Variation and Local Adaptation.” Van Wyk received a $1000 prize and Saul Gershenz, $500.
“Availability of foraging and nesting habitat potentially limits native bee range, which affects where pollinator services occur,” Scampavia wrote in her introduction. “Prior studies focus on how foraging habitat influences bee distribution, but few consider nesting limitations. Understanding how different soil properties affect native bee nest site preference can help predict where these nests will be found in agricultural landscapes, as well as whether particular farming practices could affect the health of nesting bees.”
Her objective: “to determine whether tillage, irrigation and application of pesticides impact nest site selection using a controlled choice assay.”
She examined the nests of bees in four genus categories: Lasioglossum, Halictus, Svastra and Melissodes.
Scampavia concluded “The two soil treatments that positively influenced nest initiation (tillage and irrigation) would be found in actively farmed areas, rather than fallow fields or field margins. If the presence of insecticide residues or tillage affects offspring survival, these results suggest that bees nesting in agricultural areas are faced with an ecological trap that could negatively affect development and overwintering survival. Providing strips of bare, tilled and irrigated soil in early spring in field margins or hedgerows could be one way to create attractive pesticide and late-season tillage-free shelters in which native bees could nest.”
Prior to coming to UC Davis, Scampavia worked for the U.S. Forest service as a biological technician, studying pollinator visitation to rare plants of the Mojave Desert. She also volunteered at Scripps College (Jupiter, Fla.) as a planner and coordinator for large education outreach events.
In addition to her PhD research, she participates in a variety of education outreach and conservation projects. She has presented lectures for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as part of the Schoolyard Habitat Project; worked for the California Native Plant Society, documenting bee diversity in a threatened portion of Knowland Park in Oakland; and co-taught an undergraduate course focusing on current threats to pollinator populations and how to educate the general public to effect positive change.
Scampavia writes a bee blog, “Diadasia, The Lives of Other Bees,” at https://diadasia.wordpress.com/ that she launched in February 2012.
The Bee Symposium, sponsored by the Honey and Pollination Center and the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, featured keynote speaker Marla Spivak, Distinguished McKnight Professor, University of Minnesota and a 2010 MacArthur Fellow, who discussed "Helping Bees Stand on Their Own Six Feet." The symposium drew 360 people.
Entomology doctoral candidate Matthew Prebus of the Phil Ward lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, video-recorded the presentations and uploaded them today.
They are all on YouTube.
Marla Spivak: Protecting Pollinators
Amy Toth: Combined Effects of Viruses and Nutritional Stress on Honey Bee Health
Elina Niño: Best Management Practices to Support Honey Bee Health
Neal Williams: Enhancing Forage for Bees
Jake Reisdorf: Getting into Beekeeping- Thoughts from a 12-year-old Beekeeper
Katharina Ullmann: Project Integrated Crop Pollination
John Miller: Keeping Bees Healthy with Forage
Benjamin Sallman: Bee Informed Partnership
Gretchen LeBuhn: The Giant Sunflower Project
Christine Casey: Introduction to the Häagen Dazs Honey Bee Haven
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Beetles do it. Birds do it.
Bats do it.
Do what, you ask? They pollinate!
The Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, will greet visitors on Saturday, March 14 at its open house, themed "Pollinator Nation."
To be held from 1 to 4 p.m. in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, it promises to be both fun and educational.
“It will be about bees, bees, bees!” said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and professor of entomology at UC Davis. "Also, we are borrowing specimens of pollinating birds, bats and lemurs from the UC Davis Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology to cover non-insect pollinators, which should be fun."
Lots of animals are pollinators. It's not just bees, bats, butterflies. bats and birds. Pollinators can be ants, flies, moths, wasps and the like.
You'll see many of them at the open house. Staff research associate Billy Synk of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, will provide a bee observation hive. That's a glassed-in hive filled with a bee colony. You'll be able to see the queen bee, worker bees and drones.
The event is free and open to the public. Family activities are also planned.
Special attractions include a “live” petting zoo, featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas
The Bohart Museum houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. 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. Noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007) founded the museum.
The museum is open to the public four days a week, Monday through Thursday, but special weekend open houses are held throughout the academic year
The Bohart Museum's regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. The insect museum is closed to the public on Fridays and on major holidays. Admission is free.
More information is available by accessing the website at http://bohart.ucdavis.edu/; telephoning (530) 752-9493; or emailing bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.