The unique art/science fusion program, held appropriately on Earth Day, will be presented at 7 p.m. in the UC Davis Main Theatre. Doors open at 6:30. The event is affiliated with the UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dance and the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program. 

The program is the work of scholar/performer/composer Linda Burman-Hall, professor of music/ethnomusicology at UC Santa Cruz, and biologist Richard Tenaza, professor of biological sciences, University of the Pacific, Stockton.

Tenaza's UC Davis connection: he received his doctorate in zoology from UC Davis in 1974.

Burman-Hall will present an electronic sound collage composition and videography, coupled with Tenaza’s field recordings and photography of threatened and endangered species in Indonesia’s Mentawai Islands, located more than 100 miles west of Sumatra.

In the abstract, Burman-Hall asks:  “What does the rainforest tell us about ourselves and the world? In the Mentawai Islands of Indonesia, wildlife communicates using a complete spectrum of sound that exceeds the range and timbre of a western orchestra. More than 50 meters overhead, female gibbons sing expressive duets in the tree-tops. Hundreds of unique species of birds, frogs, and insects also call and chorus, and in the midst of this sonorous world live indigenous tribes who have listened to the rainforest and existed harmoniously with its flora and fauna for millennia.”

“Mentawai, Listening to the Rainforest, is a extraordinary opportunity to enhance environmental literacy,” said artist Donna Billick, co-founder and co-director of the UC Davis Art Science Fusion Program.  “Listening engages all our senses to a heightened awareness that brings consciousness into the present moment.  This approach to research, using sound image and videography, is as good as it can be. I applaud Linda Burman-Hall and Richard Tenaza for drifting out into the Art/Science borderland to bring back the Mentawai gifts.”

Billick, a noted artist who created the six-foot-long bee sculpture in the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis, will be one of the respondents (asked for their views) following the presentation. Other respondents are UC Davis faculty members Lynne Isbell, professor of anthropology; Andrew Marshall, associate professor of anthropology; Sarah Hrdy, professor emerita of anthropology, Henry Spiller, associate professor of music (ethnomusicology).

The program will showcase wildlife of the rainforest. Tenaza, a wildlife biologist, photographer, world traveler and adventurer, has conducted research in the Arctic, Antarctica, Africa, South America, China, and throughout Southeast Asia with a focus on Indonesia. He specializes in primates and has worked extensively to document and preserve Kloss's gibbon (Hylobates klossii) of Mentawai.

And insects? Among the Mentawai insects Tenaza has photographed are nasute termites and assorted butterflies, including the Malay Lacewing (Cethosia hypsea)  and The Cruiser (Vindula erota).

All in all, it promises to be "fantastic," says entomologist/artist  Diane Ullman, who does triple duty as (1) professor and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology  (2) associate dean for undergraduate academic programs in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and (3) the co-director and co-founder of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program.

Eric Mussen in his "Show Me the Honey" shirt. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

In addition to cactus honey, honey bee guru Eric Mussen, Extension apiculturist with the UC Davis Department of Entomology, will share five other varieties:  California buckwheat, avocado, Eucalyptus, sage and orange.

Visitors can taste the honey from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Briggs Hall courtyard. Some 25,000 toothpicks will be provided. The honey? It's from Bennett’s Honey Farm in Ventura County.

Mussen has been staffing the honey-tasting table every year at the UC Davis Picnic Day since 1980. This year, due to popular demand, the department will add another table.

Mussen, with the UC Davis Department of Entomology since 1976, also will answer questions about honey and honey bees.  

The event, free and open to the public, is part of the entomological activities that will take place at two locations: Briggs Hall, off Kleiber Hall Drive, and the Bohart Museum of Entomology, 1124 Academic Surge on California Drive.

The scores of activities at Briggs Hall will include Maggot Art, cockroach races and termite trails.  At the Bohart Museum, home of more than seven million specimens, visitors can check out not only the pinned specimens but the live “petting zoo,” which includes Madagascar hissing cockroaches and walking sticks. In keeping with the museum theme,   “Insects Are Forever”--and that insects can be a girl's best friend--the Bohart officials will post photos of women entomologists.

Indeed! You'll see professors, researchers and graduate students.

More information is on the UC Davis Department of Entomology website.

Bee swarm at UC Davis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology was quoted in a news story published today about a bee swarm on a Stockton ballfield.

"It came from over the center-field wall during the top of the fourth inning, a dark cloud headed straight for home plate," wrote Stockton Record staff writer Alex Breitler. "Bees. Perhaps 20,000 of them."

Breitler related that "players dived into the dirt or spring for the dugout, while the public address announcer asked the crowd to stay calm."

These weren't Africanized bees. They were European honey bees. But the buzzing apparently scared a lot of people.

Mussen explained to the news reporter why swarms occur: a honey bee colony grows so large that the queen takes off with half of the bees, leaving her hive to a daughter queen.

"When the bees are swarming," Mussen told the reporter, "it's about the craziest thing you ever saw. There's this big mass of bees moving back and forth, up and down, forward and backward."

When bees swarm, they're following their leaders or scouts, who are seeking a new home for the colony. (Read Thomas Seeley's The Honeybee Democracy.)

Often bee swarms move along in a couple of hours or a couple of days.

The bee swarm occurred on Sunday.

What happened next probably disgusted a lot of people, especially beekeepers and others who are trying to help the bees.

"The bees were still there the next morning," Breiter related. "With another game in a matter of hours, the team took action Monday."

Someone called an exterminator who "zapped them" dead.

All 20,000 of them. No more pollination services or honey producers for these bees.

As an aside, if you encounter a bee swarm, you can contact your local beekeeping association to collect the swarm. The UC Davis Department of Entomology maintains a list of California beekeeping groups and state beekeeping associations on its Bee Biology Program's website. Indeed, we in the UC Davis Department of Entomology frequently field calls about bee swarms. Three came in over the last couple of days. Each time a beekeeper came out and gratefully collected them.

Almost all of the calls we receive are prefaced with "I know that the bee population is declining and I don't want them killed. Do you know of someone who could come out and get them?"

Unfortunately, some call a exterminator. Me thinks that a beekeeper could arrive as quickly as an exterminator.

Bryony Bonning

That's why we're looking forward to hearing Bryony Bonning speak on "Novel Toxin Delivery Strategies for Management of Pestiferous Aphids" at the next UC Davis Department of Entomology seminar, scheduled from 12:10 to 1 p.m., Wednesday, April 18 in 122 Briggs Hall.

Aphids, Bonning says,  transmit more than 275 plant viruses "that result in considerable economic loss within the agricultural sector."

Now that's a lot of plant viruses!

A professor with the Iowa State University's Department of Entomology, Bonning is closely linked to UC Davis. She's a former postdoctoral research associate in the Bruce Hammock lab, Department of Entomology. Hammock, a distinguished professor of entomology, worked with her from 1990 to 1994. Her specialty: genetic engineering and optimization of baculovirus insecticides.

Bonning returns here Wednesday with lots of credentials. She's an associate editor for the Journal of Invertebrate Pathology; a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); a member of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, Baculovirus Study Group; and a member of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, Dicistrovirus/Iflavirus Study Group.

Bonning received her bachelor's degree in zoology from the University of Durham, UK in 1985, and her doctorate in applied entomology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, UK in 1989.

In her abstract for Wednesday's talk, Bonning explains: "Viruses in the Luteoviridae are obligately transmitted by aphids in a persistent manner that requires virion accumulation in the aphid hemocoel.  To enter the hemocoel, the virion must bind and traverse the aphid gut epithelium. The molecular mechanisms involved in this process are poorly understood. By screening a phage display library, we identified a peptide that binds to the gut epithelium of the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum  (Harris) and impedes the update of Pea enation mosaic virus from the pea aphid gut into the hemocoel.   In this talk, the development of two novel aphid management technologies based on knowledge of pea aphid – Pea enation mosaic virus molecular interactions will be described. These technologies provide enhanced delivery of both gut active and neurotoxic peptides."

"I can hardly wait for Bryony Bonning to visit us and present a seminar," Hammock said. "She is one of our most productive alumni in continuing her work on insect developmental biology and green pesticides based on insect viruses and expanded this dramatically into exciting new areas.  She is advancing fundamental virology while applying this knowledge in production agriculture in both insect control and in blocking transmission of plant diseases by insects.  She clearly is the leader in insect control with recombinant viruses."

Her April 18th seminar promises to zero in on those dratted pea aphids. The more we know about them, the better we can control them.

And the good news is that many of the UC Davis Department of Entomology's seminars will be videotaped and later posted on UCTV.