- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The honey bee population is declining throughout the world, but not the interest in the art of queen rearing.
The annual class taught by bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey, manager of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at the University of California, Davis, filled up within a week and 25 are on the waiting list for next year.
It’s so popular that Cobey may teach two classes in 2010: one for commercial beekeepers and one for hobbyists.
The class, set March 17-19, includes two days of classroom and hands-on beekeeping, and an optional tour on March 19 of large scale commercial queen production facilities in northern
The class “is designed to provide an understanding and appreciation of what it takes to rear high-quality queens,” said Cobey, who accepts only 20 students per course.
Cobey, whose background includes operation of a commercial queen production and bee breeding business, will present information on bee biology and principles of queen rearing.
“The beekeepers will be involved in the various steps of the process including setting up cell builders, grafting, handling queen cells and establishing mating nucs (nucleus hives),” Cobey said. She also discuss the importance of drone production and establishing mating areas.
Her queen bee instrumental insemination classes at UC Davis draw students from throughout the world. Cobey will teach “Instrumental Insemination and Bee Breeding Workshop” April 14, 15 and 16, and the “Advanced Workshop on the Technique of Instrumental Insemination” April 22 and 23. The list of registrants includes beekeepers from
For the art of queen rearing class, it’s BYOV.
That means “bring your own veil.”
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's often mistaken for a honey bee.
It's not a honey bee. It's a hover fly or flower fly.
And this one, hovering around the plants last Saturday in the Storer Gardens at the University of California, Davis, looked like a Syrphus opinator to me.
So I asked UC Davis entomologist Robert "Bob" Bugg, who specializes in flower flies (Syrphidae), what it is.
"If I have to be an opinator, I'd opine that you're right," he quipped.
Bugg, who received his doctorate in entomology at UC Davis, does research on the biological control of insect pests, cover crops, and restoration ecology.
If you want to learn more about flower flies, read Dr. Bugg's "Flower Flies (Syrphidae) and Other Biological Control Agents for Aphids in Vegetable Crops" (Publication 8285, May 2008, University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
UC Davis bee specialists were well represented in a recent edition of The IPM Practitioner, which landed on our desk last week.
The edition, devoted to “Pesticides and Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder,” includes four photos from the UC Davis Department of Entomology. They show bee specialist Michael “Kim” Fondryk tending his bees in the Roy Gill almond orchard,
As mentioned in the publication, “The exact cause of CCD has not been determined. A CCD task force has been established and a number of possibilities are being investigated.”
Bees continue to die in alarming numbers. Some of the nation's beekeepers report losing from one-third to 100 percent of their bees due to the mysterious
phenomenon known as CCD, in which all the adult bees abandon the hive, leaving behind the queen, brood and stored food.
As managing editor William Quarles says in The IPM Practitioner: "Despite our dependence on honey bees, we have lost about 45 percent of them over the past 65 years. According to the USDA, there were 5.9 million colonies in 1947 and about 2.4 million today."
Quarles, an IPM specialist who is executive director of the Bio-Integral Resource Center, suggests a nationwide monitoring program to confirm or deny the role of pesticides in CCD.
Quarle concludes: "If we do not take better care of our bees, there could be a significant impact on crop production. Some foods could become scarce and expensive. We should also treat our bees better because they are our friends, they enrich our planet, and it is the right thing to do."
Well said. Well said, indeed.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Call it serendipity. Call it a major collaborative effort. Call it a keen eye for science.
Whatever you call it, research that sprang from studies on insect pest control in the Bruce Hammock lab at the
We all know of people suffering from heart failure, which occurs when the heart can’t pump enough blood throughout the body. The condition affects 5 million people in the
The research in the laboratories of cardiologist and cell biologist Nipavan Chiamvimonvat, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, UC Davis School of Medicine, and entomologist Bruce Hammock, Department of Entomology, showed that the new class of drugs reduces heart swelling in rat models with heart failure.
“This holds promise to treat heart failure and other cardiovascular as well as kidney problems,” said nephrology professor Robert Weiss, Department of Internal Medicine.
Similar compounds are now in clinical trials.
"The study of rat models showed that heart failure is driven by high angiotensin associated with high blood pressure, artery disease and some kidney disease,” Hammock said. “When that occurs, a key enzyme called soluble epoxide hydrolase is increased."
The 11-member research team showed they could inhibit the enzyme with a drug made by Paul Jones, a former postgraduate researcher at UC Davis. The swelling and ultimate failure of the heart is blocked and reversed, Hammock said.
“Interestingly, the increase in heart size associated with extreme exercise does not increase levels of the epoxide hydrolase, and exercise induced heart enlargement fortunately is not blocked by the drug.”
This research follows earlier studies reported from the Chiamvimonvat laboratory on cardiac hypertrophy. The two UC Davis laboratories collaborated with the laboratories of John Shyy at UC Riverside and Yi Zhu, Cardiovascular Sciences,
The paper, “Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase Plays an Essential Role in Angiotensin II-Induced Cardiac Hypertrophy,” is online.
This is definitely a significant discovery that could result in saving scores of lives. And to think it all started with the Hammock lab discovering an enzyme inhibitor that regulates insect larvae development.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
She enclosed $20 from her allowance savings.
Hannah Fisher Gray, 11, of
Hannah collected $110 at her birthday party and then contributed $110 from her own money so that both UC Davis and
The girls are the newest bee crusaders, said Lynn Kimsey, chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology.
“These are very generous gifts from the heart,” Kimsey said. “It’s very touching that these girls would take a special interest in helping us save the honey bees.”
Hannah, a fifth grader from
In the letter, Hannah expressed her concern “about our environment and its creatures, especially the honey bees.”
“I saw the Häagen-Dazs commercial and I instantly wanted to learn more,” she wrote. “I researched about bees and learned ways I could help, such as donating money, using honey instead of sugar, planting honeybee-friendly plants and supporting beekeepers.”
“For my birthday party, I asked my guests to make gifts of money to support honeybee research instead of giving presents for me. The total of these gifts was $110. I am making a matching gift of $110 of my own money, and splitting the gift between the
One of Hannah’s birthday gifts was a T-shirt proclaiming “Bee a Hero.” And, in keeping with her passion for bees, she dressed in a honey bee costume last Halloween.
Hannah learned of the troubling bee crisis from the national Häagen-Dazs campaign, launched Feb. 19 to create awareness for the plight of the honey bee. Nearly 40 percent of Häagen-Dazs brand ice cream flavors are linked to fruits and nuts pollinated by bees.
Katie Brown learned of the plight of the honey bees through the Häagen-Dazs Web site, www.helpthehoneybees.com.
Her mother, Molly Pont-Brown, said that Katie "gets a portion of her allowance each week for charity and had been wanting to help the bees and saving up for a long time, so we were looking online for ways to help the bees and stumbled upon their (Häagen-Dazs) program.”
In her donation letter to UC Davis, Katie drew the Häagen-Dazs symbol, “HD Loves HB,” and two smiling bees. She signed her name with three hearts.
Eager to share information with her classmates on the plight of the honey bees, Katie took photos of foods that bees pollinate and served Honey Bee Vanilla ice cream, the new flavor that Häagen-Dazs created last year as part of its bee crisis-awareness campaign.
Katie is "about to give another $40 additionally from her Star Student Week," her mother said. The six-year-old chose to donate $2 per child to the honey bee research program instead of buying the customary trinkets for them. Katie also sent each classmate a “bee-mail” from the Häagen-Dazs Web site to let them know about it.
For Christmas, Katie received a Häagen-Dazs bee shirt and bee books from her family. Her grandmother in
“What a great thing (the drive to save the bees) for Häagen-Dazs to do,” Molly Pont-Brown wrote in a letter to UC Davis. “And, of course, we appreciate all your department is doing to help the very important honeybees with your research, as well!”
When told of the
As part of its national campaign, Häagen-Dazs last February committed a total of $250,000 for bee research to UC Davis and
The Häagen-Dazs brand is also funding a design competition to create a half-acre honey bee haven garden at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis. The deadline to submit entries is Jan. 30.
UC Davis Extension Apiculturist Eric Mussen, a member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty for 32 years, said the bee population "still has not recovered from previous losses." Some of the nation's beekeepers have reported losing one-third to 100 percent of their bees due to colony collapse disorder (CCD), in which bee mysteriously abandon their hives. He attributes CCD to multiple factors, including diseases, parasites, pesticides, malnutrition, stress and climate change.
"Bees pollinate about 100 agricultural crops, or about one-third of the food that we eat daily," Mussen said.
Those interesting in donating to the honey bee research program at UC Davis or learning more about the design competition for the honey bee haven can access the Department of Entomology home page.
