- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
What insects did you see during the Solar Eclipse, dubbed "The Great North American Eclipse?" And what were they doing?
In some parts of North America, as the moon passed between the earth and sun, folks saw a total solar eclipse. But here in Solano County, California, totality it was not.
Partial.
We watched the Great North America Eclipse as the moon took a tiny bite out of the sun.
And then a queen bumble bee buzzed into our pollinator garden just as the moon helped itself to another bite.
Bite of the moon or bite of the bumble bee?
Game over.
The bumble bee won (well, just for a few minutes) and then we returned to the solar eclipse.
The bumble bee appeared to be a Bombus californicus. And she was hungry.
If she had experienced a total solar eclipse, she may have immediately returned to her nest: "It's dark. Day over."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
That's when the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology will celebrate the 15th anniversary of its bee garden with an open house from 10 a.m. to noon. It's free and family friendly.
The half-acre garden is located next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, west of the central campus.
The open house will include a tour of the garden at 11 a.m.; catch-and-release bee activity to observe bees up close; information about low-water plants; and presentations on University of California pollinator research.
Open from dawn to dusk (free admission), the Bee Haven is described as "a unique outdoor museum that provides resources for local bee pollinators, inspires and educates visitors to create pollinator habitat gardens, and provides a site for the observation and study of bees and the plants that support them."
Director of the garden is Elina Lastro Niño, associate professor of Cooperative Extension - Apiculture, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. Christine Casey is the manager, the academic program management officer.
The garden was installed in the fall of 2009, under the tenure of interim department chair Lynn Kimsey, now UC Davis distinguished professor emerita, and with primary funds from the Häagen-Dazs ice cream brand. Featuring a series of interconnected gardens with names like “Honeycomb Hideout,” “Nectar Nook” and “Pollinator Patch,” it was designed to provide the Laidlaw honey bees with a year-around food source, raise public awareness about the plight of honey bees, encourage visitors to plant bee-friendly gardens of their own, and serve as a research site.
“This garden is a living laboratory to educate, inspire and engage people of all ages in the serious work of helping to save honey bees,” said Dori Bailey, then director of Haagen-Dazs Consumer Communications.
Art graces the garden, thanks to the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program, founded and directed by entomologist-artist Diane Ullman, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology; and Davis-based artist Donna Billick. Billick, a self-described "rock artist," sculpted the six-foot-long worker bee that anchors the haven. Students and area residents crafted the bee-motif ceramic tiles that line a bench, which also includes the names of major donors.
A mural featuring native bees graces the shed in the garden. It was a project of the Entomology 1 class, "Art, Science and the World of Insects," taught by Ullman and Billick. Then doctoral student Sarah Dalrymple of the Rick Karban lab, served as the graphics project coordinator and teaching assistant, guiding the students on design, creation and installation of the panels. She went on to be named the 2011 recipient of the UC Davis Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award and praised for fusing the boundaries of biology, art and culture.
The Bee Haven came to "bee" after officials at the Haagen-Dazs read a research news story on honey bees, written by communication specialist Kathy Keatley Garvey and telephoned her. The article, on "building a better bee," chronicled the plight of honey bees and the work of bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey, then manager of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility and now with Washington State University. Haagen-Dazs served as the primary donor of the garden and also funded the Häagen-Dazs Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Davis. It went to Michelle Flenniken, an insect virus researcher based at UC San Francisco. She is now a professor at Montana State University.
Links:
Sausalito Team Wins Design Competition
http://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=15240
Grand Opening Celebration of Honey Bee Garden
http://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=15249
Eagle Scout Project: Fence Around the Bee Garden
http://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=10166
Campus Buzzway: Wildflowers
http://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=15242
Haagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven: Sacramento Bee Award
(With photo of founding volunteers)
http://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=10205
Shedding Light on Native Bees
https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=27570
For more information on the UC Davis Bee Haven, access the website at https://beegarden.ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
No, wait. Catch...examine...and then release.
That's what attendees will do at the UC Davis Bee Haven's 15th anniversary celebration, set from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, April 6 on Bee Biology Road, west of the central campus.
They'll be using a bee vacuum device to scoop up a honey bee, carpenter bee, bumble bee or other pollinator for close observation.
The half-acre garden is located next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Research Facility. Both are part of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
The open house, free and family friendly, will include a tour of the garden at 11 a.m.; catch-and-release bee activity to observe bees up close; information about low-water plants; and presentations on University of California pollinator research.
The haven is open daily from dawn to dusk (no admission). It is described as "a unique outdoor museum that provides resources for local bee pollinators, inspires and educates visitors to create pollinator habitat gardens, and provides a site for the observation and study of bees and the plants that support them."
Director of the garden is Elina Lastro Niño, associate professor of Cooperative Extension - Apiculture, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. Christine Casey is the manager, the academic program management officer.
Workers installed the garden in the fall of 2009, under the tenure of interim department chair Lynn Kimsey, now UC Davis distinguished professor emerita, and with primary funds from the Häagen-Dazs ice cream brand. Featuring a series of interconnected gardens with names like “Honeycomb Hideout,” “Nectar Nook” and “Pollinator Patch,” it was designed to provide the Laidlaw honey bees with a year-around food source, raise public awareness about the plight of honey bees, encourage visitors to plant bee-friendly gardens of their own, and serve as a research site.
A six-foot worker bee sculpture of ceramic and mosaic anchors the garden. It's the work of self-described "rock artist" Donna Billick of Davis. UC Davis distinguished professor Diane Ullman and Billick co-founded and directed the UC Davis Art-Science Fusion Program, and their art and that of Ullman's entomology students, as well as members of the community and other volunteers, are showcased throughout the garden.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"I took a gap decade. During that time I had a series of eclectic jobs and life experiences. Those experiences proved extremely useful during my PhD."
Lamas, a former commercial beekeeper in New Hampshire, will share his life and research experiences at a seminar hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, on Monday, April 15.
His seminar, titled "How Doing a PhD Is Like Building a House," begins at 4:10 p.m. in Room 122 of Briggs Hall. It also will be on Zoom. The Zoom link:
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/9 5882849672
"This presentation describes how the intersection of life experiences and my PhD led to creative and generative research that led to large discovery in disease transmission dynamics in collapsing honey bee colonies," Lamas says.
A first-generation college student, Lamas received his bachelor's degree in biology in 2008 from Colby-Sawyer College, a private college in New London, New Hampshire. He obtained his doctorate in entomology at the University of Maryland in 2022.
He credits his mentor, USDA-ARS research entomologist Jay Evans of the Bee Research Laboratory, Beltsville, MD., with encouraging him to apply to become an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) fellow with the USDA-ARS Research Participation Program.
Lamas, known as "Dr. Zac," has presented programs on his research and beekeeping management to state beekeeping associations in California, Texas, Florida, Colorado, Virginia, Missouri, West Virginia, and Washington State, among others, and has addressed the American Beekeeping Federation, American Honey Producers' Association and Apimondia. Globally, he has delivered presentations to Apimondia, Montreal, Canada, and to the Eurbee 8th Congress of Apidology, Ghent, Belgium.
Lamas rears open-mated carniolans. "These are docile, productive bees, that I produce for my own experiments," he writes on his website. "We can literally pet our bees during experiments. This level of docility allows us to work intimately with the bees, sitting in front of open colonies for long periods to collect samples."
Lamas is a noted researcher on varroa mites. "Who do Varroa really feed on? Check out this presentation where I share a new finding of Varroa destructor I carried out three years of research, and along with collaborators (including my family!) individually inspected over 30,000 bees to describe the distribution of Varroa inside a colony." (See YouTube presentation.)
Lamas' recent publications involve varroa mites, infectious diseases and pesticides:
- Zachary S. Lamas, Eugene V. Ryabov, David J. Hawthorne, Jay D. Evans, "Oversharing by honey bees and the spread of viruses," bioRxiv 2022.05.15.492017; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.05.15.492017
- Ryabov EV, Posada-Florez F, Rogers C, Lamas ZS, Evans JD, Chen Y and Cook SC (2022) "The vectoring competence of the mite Varroa destructor for deformed wing virus of honey bees is dynamic and affects survival of the mite," Frontiers in Insect Science. 2:931352. DOI: 10.3389/finsc.2022.931352
- Posada-Florez, F., Lamas, Z.S., Hawthorne, D.J. et al. "Pupal cannibalism by worker honey bees contributes to the spread of deformed wing virus," Scientific Reports 11, 8989 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-88649-y
- Alger, S.A.1, Burnham, P.A., Lamas, Z.S2, Brody, A.K., Richardson, L.R., (2017). "Home sick: impacts of migratory beekeeping on honey bee (Apis mellifera) pests, pathogens, and colony size," PeerJ 6:e5812; DOI 10.7717/peerj.5812
- Kirsten S. Traynor, Dennis vanEngelsdorp, Zachary S. Lamas, "Social disruption: Sublethal pesticides in pollen lead to Apis mellifera queen events and brood loss," Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, Volume 214, 2021, 112105, ISSN 0147-6513, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2021.112105
Honey bee scientist Brian Johnson, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is coordinating the department's seminars for the 2023-24 academic year. For any Zoom technical issues, he may be reached at brnjohnson@ucdavis.edu.
