- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Colony collapse disorder (CCD), the mysterious phenomonen characterized by honey bees abandoning their hives, is still with is, and the cause is still mysterious.
Over the past three years beekeepers throughout the United States have reported losing from one-third to 100 percent of their colonies to CCD, says UC Cooperative Extension Apiculturist Eric Mussen, a member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology Faculty since 1976 and a noted authority on honey bees.
The bees just vanish, leaving behind the queen, the immature brood (eggs, larvae and pupae) and stored food.
The calamity of CCD.
The queen, in peak season, lays about 2000 eggs a day. The worker bees serve as the nurse maids, nannies, royal attendants, heating and air conditioning specialists, foragers, guards and undertakers. They feed their mother (the queen) and their brothers, the drones. The sisters are their brothers' keepers. The drones' only function is to mate with the queen.
The worker bees pollinate about 100 crops in California, including nuts, fruits and vegetables. They just finished pollinating California's 700,000 acres of almonds. Now they're pollinating pomegranates, tangerines, lemons, squash, cucumbers and other fruits and vegetables in orchards and gardens near you.
Bring on National Pollinator Week, June 22-28.
Meanwhile, it's good to see that Häagen-Dazs Häagen-Dazs is continuing to support honey bee research at UC Davis and Pennsylvania State University. Back in February 2008, the premier ice cream brand launched an educational campaign to save the bees and just unveiled a newly updated site. One of the next projects: the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee friendly garden at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, UC Davis. Designed by a Sausalito team, the haven will be implemented this summer and publicly dedicated in October.
The haven will be a year-around food source for bees and other insects, such as butterflies, bumble bees and syrphids. Other goals: to create a public awareness of the plight of the honey bee, and to educate visitors about bees and the kinds of bee friendly plants they can choose for their own gardens.
Bottom line: let's keep our bees healthy. Mussen suspects that CCD is caused by a combination of factors: malnutrition, pesticides, parasites, diseases and stress.
If CCD has a face, then two photos can tell the story. First, look at the photo of healthy bees and then look at the photo from an abandoned hive. The bee antenna poking through an abandoned cell is just plain sad.
The queen bee, the sisters, the brothers, the brood--all gone.
The calamity of CCD.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Making a difference--that's what it's all about.
An integrated pest management (IPM) team from the United States is in Central Asia for the third Integrated Pest Management Stakeholders' Forum, June 1-5 in Bishhek, Kyrgystan.
Among the team members is UC Davis entomology professor and IPM specialist Frank Zalom. He'll be participating in the stakeholders' forum and a pest diagnostics training workshop.
The event is sponsored by a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Collaborative Research Support Project (CRSP) grant. Zalom, a Fellow of the Entomological Society of America and a noted IPM specialist, is a co-investigator on the grant.
Scientists from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajkistan, as well as Kyrgystan are conferring with Zalom and his IPM colleagues from Michigan State University, Ohio State University, Montana Stae University, and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDIA).
The stakeholders' forum will include talks by key governmental and agricultural officials, and updates on IPM progress and concerns in the four Central Asian countries.
Joy Landis of Michigan State University's IPM Program is chronicling the travels on her blog.
In one blog, she wrote:
When we tell people the IPM project collaborates with colleagues in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, they are often unsure where these countries are. But, if we say they are located by all the other "stan" countries, then we get a flash of recognition.
The suffix "stan" means "land of," so Uzbekistan is the land of the Uzbeks, and Tajikistan is the land of the Tajiks and so forth. These countries have overlapping populations of various ethnic groups with distinct cultures. During the 20th century, they were part of the Soviet Union until it was dissolved in the early 1990's.
Be sure to read Joy Landis' blog for the latest updates.
Making a difference--that's what it's all about.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Sheridan Miller's gift to UC Davis for honey bee research was both generous and thoughtful.
The 11-year-old Bay Area resident raised $733 for the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility through the sale of jars of honey, candles, baked goods and a self-penned booklet on the plight of honey bees.
The fifth grader and her family (father Craig, mother Annika and sister Annelie, 8) traveled from their home in Marin County to present the check to Lynn Kimsey, professor and chair of the Department of Entomology and director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology. Bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey guided the group on a tour of the Laidlaw facility and apiary.
“It’s very thoughtful and generous of a little girl to think of the plight of the honey bees and to raise funds for research,” Kimsey said. "We are overwhelmed.”
Said Cooperative Extension Apiculturist Eric Mussen, a member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology since 1976: “I really appreciate the fact that so many members of the general public have become concerned about the plight of honey bees. I am particularly impressed by individuals such as Sheridan who have devoted so much time and effort in really trying to improve the health and longevity of the honey bees.”
In writing her booklet, Sheridan gleaned information from the UC Davis Department of Entomology Web site and the Haagen-Dazs Web site.
"Honey bees pollinate delicious fruits, vegetables and even nuts," Sheridan wrote. "If they were to disappear, our food source would consist of wheat, rice and corn."
Sheridan's dedication deeply illustrates what one person can do to help save the bees.
Sheridan cannot imagine a world without bees. Neither can we.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
With the opening of baseball season, it's "peanuts, popcorn and Cracker Jacks!"
But to beekeepers, it's peanuts.
Or rather, peanut-like shells.
Immature queen bees grow to maturity in cells that resemble peanut shells.
When UC Davis bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey, manager of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis, led a recent queen-bee rearing class on a tour of commercial queen bee producers, one of the stops was at C. F. Koehnen & Sons, Inc., Glenn, Calif.
The Koehnens, in the bee business since 1907, are the largest producers of honey bees and queen bees in California. They maintain more than 15,000 colonies. The Cobey class marveled at the operation.
A beekeeper held a frame up to the sky as worker bees cleaned out the vacated queen bee cells.
Not your basic goober peas!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Irving Berlin wasn't writing about carpenter bees when he penned "Easter Bonnet":
In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it
You'll be the grandest lady in the Easter parade
I'll be all in clover and when they look you over
I'll be the proudest fellow in the Easter parade
However, if you watch carpenter bees move from flower to flower as they gather nectar, you're bound to see one with its head inside a blossom.
An Easter bonnet, to be sure.
I captured this image of a carpenter bee visiting a California native wildflower, "Bird's Eyes" or "Bird's-Eye Gilia" (Gilia tricolor), on the UC Davis campus. It's aptly named. It's a light lavender and purple tubular flower with a yellow throat and powder-blue stamens.