- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"To bee or not to bee."
That is the question. What is the solution?
The plight of the honey bees has not escaped the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Students' Association (EGSA).
This year's winning t-shirt, the result of a departmental faculty-student-staff-vote, stars the "unsung heroes": the honey bees.
Randall "Randy" Veirs, executive assistant for department chair Lynn Kimsey, and communications specialist Kathy Keatley Garvey (yours truly), came up with the winning shirt--Randy created the intricate drawing, and KKG coined the text, spoofing a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
To bee or not to bee, that is the question.
What is the solution?
Randy, who describes himself as more of a musician than an artist, drew a framed portrait of a Shakespearean bee in period clothing, complete with an Elizabethan collar.
Randy, who plays principal trumpet in the UC Davis Symphony, said he spent several days drawing the bee, gathering information online about proper Shakespearean attire. His brother, Russell Veirs, also a musician (saxophone), helped prepare the image in Photoshop.
By the way, each brother has a bachelor's degree in music from UC Davis, while Russell has a master's in saxophone performance from Sacramento State University. Music and art do go together!
The t-shirt ties in with Shakespeare's view that "All the world's a stage." (Just add message.) It also ties in with Shakespeare's fascination for bees. One of the playwright's lines from Henry V: "For so work the honey bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom."
Yes, bees are well-organized and we can learn much from these hard-working social insects.
The bee t-shirt is not only raising funds for the graduate student association but raising awareness for the honey bees. Beekeepers throughout the country report they are losing from one-third to 100 percent of their bees due to colony collapse disorder, a mysterious phenomenon in which bees abandon their hives.
The t-shirts are $15 and available in child-through-adult sizes, says t-shirt coordinator Yao Hua Law, a doctoral student who studies with professor Jay Rosenheim. "The funds will be used for EGSA activities, including the monetary prizes for the EGSA-organized Undergraduate Entomology Research Poster Competition," he said. Contact Yao Hua at (530) 752-4481 or e-mail him at ylaw@ucdavis.edu for more information.
Plans are also under way to sell the T-shirts through the University Bookstore, thus making online payments possible and shipping fluid, he said.
Other UC Davis entomology t-shirts are also available. One of the favorites is "The Beetles." A parody of The Beatles' "Abbey Road" album cover, the t-shirt features four beetles crossing Abbey Road. Doctoral candidate Hillary Thomas, who studies with major professor Frank Zalom, an integrated pest management specialist, designed the shirt.
The Bees. The Beetles.
The take-home message on these shirts is also a take-everywhere message.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
There's been trouble in paradise far too long.
Now, thanks to a generous donation from Häagen-Dazs, there will be a pollinator paradise--in the way of a bee friendly garden--at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis.
Häagen-Dazs announced this week it will donate $125,000 to the UC Davis Department of Entomology to launch a nationwide design competition to create a one-half acre honey bee haven garden on Bee Biology Road. Häagen-Dazs has commited $65,000 of the $125,000 to establish the garden.
"The honey bee haven will be a pollinator paradise," said Lynn Kimsey, chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology. "It will provide a much needed, year-round food source for our bees at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility. We anticipate it also will be a gathering place to inform and educate the public about bees. We are grateful to Haagen-Dazs for its continued efforts to ensure bee health."
And you are invited to design it. The nationwide contest is open to anyone who can design a garden, using basic landscape principles. The rules, a list of bee friendly plants, design examples and other information is on the UC Davis Department of Entomology Web site.
Häagen-Dazs is funding the design competition and the
"The garden will be extremely helpful in demonstrating that bees are not a nuisance in the backyard, but instead are obtaining food and water essential for their survival," Eric Mussen, a Cooperative Extension apiculturist and a 32-year member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty, told us.
"Campus visitors," he said. "will be able to see which flowers are most attractive to foraging honey bees and how to space the flowers in order to have bees flying in the most convenient areas of their gardens.”
The deadline to submit a design is Jan. 30, 2009. Mail your design to the
More information on the design competition is available from Melissa Borel, program manager at UC Davis'
You should also check out the Häagen-Dazs educational Web site at http://www.helpthehoneybees.com. In February they commited a total of $250,000 in honey bee research to UC Davis and Pennsylvania State. And now: another way to help the honey bees.
The design competition winner will receive recognition on the Häagen-Dazs commemorative plaque at the entrance to the garden. Another gift will be a year's supply of Häagen-Dazs ice cream.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Call them plant lice. Call them plant suckers. Call them aphids.
The tiny, soft-bodied insects with pear-shaped bodies form denses colonies on plants.
They suck. Literally.
Their destructive feeding habits do not endear them to gardeners and farmers. No love lost. No lost love.
California has more than 450 species of aphids, according to the book, Caliifornia Insects, written by Jerry A. Powell and Charles L. Hogue.
I spotted these aphids on a friend's gaura (Gaura linheimeri). She called the guara a "desert rose."
Not everything was coming up roses.
For the aphids, this "desert" rose was an an oasis.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
They did it.
The University of California team that developed a successful insect pest management program for almond growers, leading to significant pesticide reduction, drew praise and applause at the Entomological Society of America's 56th annual meeting, held recently in Reno
The seven-member Almond Pest Management Alliance Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Team received the Entomological Foundation’s “2008 Award for Excellence in IPM."
The team includes IPM specialist Frank Zalom, UC Davis professor of entomology, Extension entomologist, and former director of the UC Statewide IPM Program; UC IPM advisor Carolyn Pickel, UC Cooperative Extension, Sutter-Yuba counties; UC IPM advisor Walter Bentley, UC Kearney Agricultural Center, Parlier; UC Cooperative Extension farm advisors Mario Viveros (emeritus), Kern County, Roger Duncan, Stanislaus County, and Joe Connell, Butte County; and scientist Barat Bisrabi, Dow AgroSciences. (Bisrabi received his doctorate from UC Davis).
The team developed and implemented a program “that has resulted in substantial reductions of organophosphate use,” said ESA spokesperson Richard Levine in announcing the award.
The annual award, Levine said, recognizes “the successful efforts of a team approach to IPM by a small collaborative group involving industry and academic scientists of no more than 10 team members.”
Zalom, who directed the UC IPM Program for 16 years (1988-2001), also received receive his ESA Fellow award at the same awards ceremony, as did UC Davis entomologist Michael Parrella.
The Pest Management Alliance (PMA), a partnership that included the Almond Board of California, UC Cooperative Extension, the UC IPM Program, the Department of Pesticide Regulation, the Almond Hullers and Processors Association, and Community Alliance with Family Farmers, was launched in 1998 while Zalom was director of UC IPM.
Team members conducted a massive research and demonstration project for six to eight years (1998-2005) in the state’s primary almond-growing areas: Stanislaus County (six years) and Kern and Butte counties (eight years). California leads the nation in almond production, with some 700,000 acres.
PMA’s findings appear in the publication, Seasonal Guide to Environmentally Responsible Pest Management Practices for Almonds. Written by Pickel, Bentley, Viveros, Duncan and Connell, the publication offers a combination of biological, cultural and reduced risk alternatives. The guide outlines monitoring techniques and economic thresholds for using reduced-risk pesticides and specifies when to use broad-spectrum insecticides.
The team “developed an excellent research and extension team to develop and deliver IPM to the almond industry of California,” wrote award nominator Peter Goodell, interim director of the UC IPM Program and a longtime UC IPM advisor. For example, PMA research showed that almond growers need not spray for peach twig borer, navel orangeworm and San Jose scale every year.
California almond production currently totals some 700,000 acres. Honey bees (see photo below) play a crucial role. Without honey bee pollination, there would be no almonds. Each acre requires two hives.
Another California agriculture success story!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
God in His wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.
--
Every time I see a fly I think of the Ogden Nash poem.
Our bee-friendly garden is attracting a few flies. I captured this one visiting sage and then preserved it for posterity: I posterized it in Photoshop.
