- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
How it all began: Pollination ecologist Neal Williams, associate professor in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and postdoctoral researcher Rosemary Malfi set out to research how the short-term loss of floral resources affects bumble bees, specifically the yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, a common bumble bee native to the West Coast of the United States. Its importance to agriculture, including the pollination of greenhouse tomatoes, cannot be overstated.
So, "the bee team," led by Williams, decided they needed to weigh the bees as part of their research. They engaged mechanical and electrical engineers on the UC Davis campus to see if they could come up with a "bee scale" to weigh individual foragers.
They could and they did. The project is underway in a field west of the central UC Davis campus. The site includes fine-mesh tents filled with wildflowers to contain the bumble bees and an RV converted into a lab.
Fell began his piece with "How do you weigh a bee?"
"That's the question that brought together insect specialists at the University of California, Davis, and two teams of UC Davis engineering students this year, to try and solve what turns out to be a tricky technical problem," Fell wrote. "But the consequences are important: ultimately, understanding how California's native bumble bees respond to changes in the environment and the availability of flowers, and how we can protect these insects that are so vital to both agriculture and wild plants."
The entomologists worked with electrical engineers Anthony Troxell, Jeff Luu and Wael Yehdego, advised by Andre Knoesen, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and mechanical engineers Lillian Gibbons, Laurel Salinas and Ryan Tucci, advised by Professor Jason Moore.
Fell wrote: "The electrical engineers had to solve the problem of taking the raw signal from the scale and obtaining time-stamped data for individual bees."
“We were working with very small signals, at the low end of the technology, so noise in the data was an issue,” Troxell related in the news story. "A bumble bee weighs between 150 and 200 milligrams, and to get useful information about bee health or how much pollen they are carrying, the scale would need to be accurate to less than one milligram. A conventional laboratory balance averages several readings over a few seconds — but bees are much too fast and jittery for that to work."
Williams described the bee scale as "a great example of interdisciplinary work." And indeed it is.
This project is sure to gain national and international attention. It's not just about the plight of the bumble bees but the unique collaboration between entomologists and engineers and the resulting device they successfully designed and crafted.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's so blond that all you can say is "Wow!" It's sort of like the Reese Witherspoon of bumble bees. But then the gender doesn't match. Okay, the Owen Wilson of bumble bees.
The male Bombus vandykei, commonly called "The Van Dyke Bumble Bee," is a treasure for three reasons, not necessarily in this order: (1) it's a pollinator (2) it's a bumble bee and (3) it's the color of golden wheat.
We spotted a male Bombus vandykei foraging in our lavender patch last night around 6. Its color reminded us of two other bees: the male Valley carpenter bee (Xylocopa varipuncta), a green-eyed blond bee nicknamed "The Teddy Bear Bee"; and the blondest of the blond honey bees, the Italian Cordovan. The Italian, Apis mellifera ligustica, is a subspecies of the European or Western honey bee, Apis mellifera.
The Van Dyke Bumble Bee gets around. The species is found in the Pacific Coastal states, including Washington, Oregon and California. The boys are extensively blond, but the girls aren't. In fact, the females are often confused with the yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, and the black-faced bee, Bombus californicus.
Bombus vandykei is one of about 250 described species of bumble bees worldwide. All belong to the genus, Bombus.
Want to know more about bumble bees and how to identify them? Be sure to pick up a copy of Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University Press), co-authored by bumble bee expert Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, and fellow scientists Paul Williams, Leif Richardson and Sheila Colla. It won a 2015 Outstanding Reference Sources Award, Reference and User Services Association, American Library Association.
If you click on the Princeton University link, http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10219.html, you'll hear the buzz. That's the buzz of bumble bees beckoning us to listen to them.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Doom or gloom? Boom or bloom?
Today is Earth Day, and millions of folks around the world stopped--at least for a moment--to pay tribute to the 46th annual observance. They planted trees, weeded their gardens, greeted pollinators, or just thought about environmental issues.
Every Earth Day, we pay special attention to the tower of jewels (Echium wildpretii). The biannual, native to the Canary Islands, off the coast of Morocco, is a favorite in pollinator gardens, including ours. Seven feet tall and graced with pinkish blossoms splashed with blue pollen, it lives up to its name...tower of jewels.
Then it morphs into a tower of bees. Hello, honey bees, bumble bees, sweat bees and carpenter bees.
As they dive in, will they not only survive but thrive? If we each do our part, we can help the pollinators thrive.
Happy Earth Day!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you want to learn more about native bees, mark your calendar for Saturday, April 23.
That's when the Davis Science Collective, a group of STEM graduate students at UC Davis who like to get together and do science outreach in their spare time, will host an event from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Mary L. Stephens Branch of the Yolo County Public Library, 315 E. 14th St., Davis.
It's appropriately called “Native Bee Day,” and it's free and open to the public.
UC Davis graduate student Shahla Farzan says a variety of activities and live demonstrations will be offered, including:
- Pollen display
- Live mason bees and carpenter bees
- Bees vs. flies vs. wasps: What's the difference?
- How does pollination work?
- Bees of the world, courtesy of the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis.
“It's more of an interactive event geared toward families, so we won't be having any formal talks,” Farzan said. “Instead, we're planning a variety of demonstrations and hands-on activities. For instance, we'll have an activity station where kids can learn how pollination works. First, the kids will cover their fingers in chalk dust (i.e. pollen) and collect plastic beads from inside tissue paper flowers (representing a nectar reward). As they collect 'nectar,' they'll transfer 'pollen' onto the flowers.”
Entomology graduate student Tricia Bohls of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will be there to explain the differences between honey bees and native bees. Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor at UC Davis, will showcase carpenter bees at the live native bee table. Also exhibited will be blue orchard bees, affectionately known as BOBs.
For more information, access the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/events/985443778172006/
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"Got 'em!"
That's the message we've all been waiting for.
Several of us bumble bee enthusiasts--Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, photographers Allan Jones and Gary Zamzow of Davis, and yours truly--have been searching for the first bumble bee of the year since...well...Jan. 1.
We've been hanging out near manzanita bushes, knowing that this is usually the place to find newly emerged bumble bees this time of year.
So today, Jones won. He headed over to "two beautiful manzanitas" near the off-ramps at Russell and Route 113, Davis, and spotted both the yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, and the three-banded bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus. He captured these images (below) at noon.
"I believe they are also at Hutchinson and 113, but I did not need to go that far," Jones mentioned. "The bees seemed very wary and were high overhead so I was only able to get record shots."
Good job, Allan! You nailed it!
And just in time for Valentine's Day.
Note: If you want to learn more about bumble bees, check out Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University Press) and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday) both co-authored by Robbin Thorp and other scientists.