- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
“Honey bee insurance” buzzed into the news Feb. 1 when Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., appeared on the CBS Show, "Face the Nation" and blasted the state of the economy and President Obama's economic stimulus plan.
"I doubt if the government buying $600 million worth of automobiles would provide the kind of stimulus that we're talking about here," McConnell said. "And we certainly don't need honeybee insurance. Look, this thing needs to be targeted right at the problem, if we're going to spend this enormous amount of money.”
Honey bee insurance? I listened closely for more details, but none came.
What he didn’t say--or explain--is that this is a form of crop insurance, similar to what is offered to many crop producers.
One of the earliest to write about honey bee insurance was UC Davis apiculturist Eric Mussen, who discussed revenue insurance in the November/December 2002 edition of his “From the UC Apiaries” publication. At the time, beekeepers were exploring ways to protect their investments against devastating losses. The program works like this: pay a premium to an insurance company, and if a devastating loss occurs, you’re protected up to a specific portion of your loss.
The program is now under way, but is not offered yet in some states, including
So, bottom line: Beekeepers who elect to pay a premium will receive compensation if the honey crop revenue falls below the listed “trigger” value of that year. The compensation depends on the level of coverage purchased for the colonies they own.
Currently, only honey production--not pollination or queen or bulk production--can be insured through this specific honey bee insurance program, Mussen says. And this is based on weather conditions. If there’s a drought, for example, and the bees have little food, satellite images would verify the lack of plant growth.
Back in 2002, Mussen estimated that the insurance would cost a little over 6 cents for each dollar of coverage. The federal government’s subsidy would reduce the beekeeper’s premium to three cents per dollar.
It’s taking the good with the bad.
It's like the daphne (below) that offers scented flowers but beware those poisonous berries.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It’s Friday, so it must be Friday lite…
When you’re hosting a birthday party for an entomologist, you have to think “bugs.”
That’s the rule. It’s written right there in the
(OK, I made that up.)
When a group of us from the UC Davis Department of Entomology hosted a party today for department chair Lynn Kimsey (in honor of her Feb. 1 birthday), the cake featured a praying mantis, an ant, a beetle, a grasshopper, a wasp, scores of bees, and…er…a cockroach.
Well, it was only ONE cockroach.
Which, I admit, was probably one cockroach too many.
But hey, it was plastic.
Which is what all cockroaches should be.
Fantasy Cakes and Fine Pastries,
The buggy cake drew all “oohs” and “ahs.”
Except for one “yecch.”
That was for the cockroach.
Lynn, who chairs the Bohart Museum of Entomology, home of seven million specimens, is surrounded by insects all day, so she was in her comfort zone.
Administrative assistant
“That’s the first cake I’ve cut,” she said, “with bugs on it.”
Last year when I was attempting to order a cake at an area bakery for UC Davis forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey (husband of
“You want, what?” the baker said. “Blow flies? Blow flies? You got to be kidding. Anyhow, we’re fresh out of blow flies. No blow flies today.”
Good thing I didn’t ask for maggots.
- 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
It blooms in winter and the bees love it.
Winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum), a rambling vine with trumpetlike yellow flowers, is charming visitors in the Storer Gardens at the University of California, Davis. The plant originates from western China.
The six-petaled blossoms gleam like gold in the wintry garden. When the pelting rain strikes them, they look like delighted kindergarteners splashing around in yellow raincoats.
Don't be surprised to see winter jasmine among the selections in the half-acre bee friendly garden being planned at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis. The nationwide landscape design competition, which ends Jan. 30, is sponsored by Häagen-Dazs. The garden is expected to be a reality by October.
Unfortunately, the winter jasmine has no fragrance. But that doesn't stop the bees from greeting and hugging the flowers and gathering pollen. It would take the long beak of a hummingbird to reach into the trumpetlike flower for the nectar. Or a carpenter bee to slit the corolla and steal the nectar.
But for now, on the afternoon of Jan. 24, 2009, the moments are golden.
