It's like going to the circus.

A bee circus.

When you see honey bees gather pollen from a gaura (Gaura linheimeri), it's as if  they ran off and joined the circus. You'll see hire-wire (er...high-stem) acts, somersaults, pirouettes, cartwheels and cliffhangers.

They teeter on the edge of a petal and then petal-push to the other side. They buzz upside down and then right themselves.  They're under the Big Top and then varoom, they've over it.

The gaura, a leggy perennial, is a native of North America and a member of the Onagraceae family. Its butterflylike flowers, pink and white, are drop-dead gorgeous.

The gaura is also known as "the wand flower," "the butterfly bush" and "the bee blossom." 

Eric Mussen, UC Davis apiculturist, with a panel of bees at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, UC Davis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

The varroa mite (see photo below) is an external parasite that attacks honey bees. It sucks blood from the adults (apparently preferring drones, the male bees) and from the brood (immature bees).  "It's commonly found in most hives,"  says UC Davis apiculturist Eric Mussen.

Untreated infestations of varroa mites can weaken and kill honeybee colonies

Initially from Asia, the eight-legged reddish brown parasite was first detected in the United States in 1987. It was discovered in two states that year: Florida and Wisconsin (from the same beekeeper colonies). It's now all over the United States.

"Bees try to brush it off with their legs," Mussen said.

Mussen, editor of the bi-monthly newsletter, "from the UC Apiaries," writes about varroa mites in his July-August edition.   He's been writing the newsletter since 1976.

You can read the current editions online. You can also subscribe by e-mail or by snail mail. See instructions. Or contact Mussen at ecmussen@ucdavis.edu for more information.

In addition to the UC Apiaries newsletter, Mussen writes Bee Briefs, where you can read about such topics as "getting started in beekeeping," "removing swarms" and  "honey bees and California native plants."

Both publications are invaluable to the beekeeping world and to folks who just want to know more about bees.

Mussen, a Cooperative Extension apiculturist at UC Davis for more  31 years, is the 2008 recipient of the Distinguished Achievement Award in Extension from the Pacific Branch of the Entomological Society of America.

In national demand for his expertise on honey bees, Mussen appeared on Good Morning America on March 12, and has also been interviewed for The Lehrer Hour, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the television documentary, California Heartland. Coverage also includes Sticky Stuff of Modern Marvels, the History Channel.

“Eric is the primary conduit of information on apiculture, certainly for the entire western U.S. and perhaps even broader than that,” said UC Davis entomologist Larry Godfrey, past president of the Pacific Branch of ESA.

Widely recognized for his work, Mussen received the California State Beekeepers' Association's Distinguished Service Award in 1999; Apiary Inspectors of America's Exceptional Service Award in 2000, and the California State Beekeeper Association's Beekeeper of the Year Award in 2006.

In 2007, the American Association of Professional Apiculturists honored him with an Award of Excellence in Extension Apiculture, one of only five awards the group has presented in 20 years.

As a child, Dennis Price loved to watch the honey bees. “I could sit and watch them all day,” he said.

He still does. Love the honey bees, that is.

And he never tires of watching them.

If you attended the California State Fair on Sunday, Aug. 17 or Saturday, Aug. 23, you probably saw the enthusiastic Davis resident, now a beekeeper, in the honeybee booth in the California Foodstyle building. He and his partner Karen Flores were handing out honey samples and answering questions about bees, especially about the bee observation hive where visitors could watch the queen bee, worker bees and drones.

“About one-fourth of them were afraid of the bees, but about one-half of them were as fascinated with bees as I am,” Price said.

Dennis Price is a new beekeeper. Since April. So far, his six hives have produced 81 pounds of honey. The samples he served were absolutely delicious. Liquid gold. 

Price is a graduate of UC Davis, but not in entomology. “I used to play racquetball with Larry Godfrey (Extension entomologist at UC Davis), though,” he said.<

Price is a 1989 graduate of UC Davis (chemistry and toxicology) and now works for ESA Biosciences, a company based in Chelmsford, Mass. He's the Western regional account manager, traveling from a route from Seattle to Hawaii, but mostly throughout California.

And in his “spare” time, he keeps bees.

“Bees are so underappreciated and so ignored and they work so hard for us,” Price said.

Above his head in the California Beekeepers Association booth was a sign that read:

• The average honey bee makes just 1/2 teaspoon of honey during her lifetime
• Honey bees fly about 55,000 miles just to make one pound of honey. That's equal to 1.5 times around the world.
• One third of your diet is derived from insect-pollinated plants, and 80 percent of that is done by honey bees.

It used to be that newborn pigs (such as those below) hogged the attention of fairgoers at the California State Fair. They still do, but make way for the bees.

The bees are buzzing around the sunflowers in the garden section and they're making honey in the California Foodstyle Building.

And if you're like me, you'll go to the fair just to see the bees.

You have until Sept. 1 to check them out.

A funny thing happened on the way from El Cerrito to UC Davis on Friday, Aug. 1.

And it wasn't even Friday the 13th.

At 7 a.m., a group of UC Davis employees approached their commuter van in an El Cerrito parking lot. But, after glancing at the passenger side, they weren't at all sure they wanted to board.

A huge swarm of bees bearded the entire passenger side of the vehicle and part of the windshield. Thousands of bees. Did I say thousands of bees? Thousands of bees.

What to do? Knowing about colony collapse disorder and the declining bee population, they didn't want to hurt them. So they climbed in the van via the driver's side and circled the block, hoping the bees would disperse. They didn't.

In an un-bee-lievable sight, the white van, accompanied by the bees and their queen, buzzed to the UC campus on a 60-mile freeway ride.

When the vehicle pulled into the Shields parking lot shortly before 8 a.m., so did a long line of bees hanging around the door frame.

“We lost most of them along the way,” said vanpool driver Keir Reavie, head of the Biological and Agriculture Sciences Department at Shields Library.

How did the survivors survive?

“Some bees must have slipped inside the door frame and held on to the others by linking legs,” said UC Davis apiculturist Eric Mussen. “The queen bee was probably inside the crack.”

Lynn Kimsey, professor and chair of the Department of Entomology and director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, noticed the bees on the van when she pedaled over to Shields Library early Friday afternoon.

She alerted Mussen. But he already knew about them.

Reavie had earlier emailed him, asking what to do.

Mussen recommended that they leave them alone or contact a beekeeper on campus or in El Cerrito to vacuum off the swarm. “The bees in a swarm usually won't bother you unless they are significantly disturbed,” he said.

Meanwhile, the social insects spent the day on campus, periodically leaving the van for food and water, while others—the scouts—searched campus buildings for a new home. Some bees parked on the “Van Pool Parking Only” sign and the motorcycle permit parking sign.

At least one bee casualty occurred in the Shields parking lot: a bee flew into a nearby spider's web. When Mussen arrived at the site, the spider was feasting on the web-wrapped bee. A taste of honey.

What happened to the bees? "I was not able to contact the person Eric suggested on Friday afternoon, so nobody came to take the bees," Reavie said. " When I returned to the van at 5 p.m., most of the bees had left, but there was still a large group on the passenger side rear view mirror. Some of these dispersed on the trip back to El Cerrito and the few remained were gone when I checked on the van Saturday afternoon."

As for the UC Davis commuter van, it's now “the bee mobile."

Let's hear it for our "unstung heroes."