- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Newly published research in the journal Toxicon indicates "No, they're not."
"A survey on 5115 beekeepers and 121 patients treated with bee venom by an apitherapy clinic in the Hubei province, the epicenter of COVID-19 in China, reported that none of the beekeepers developed symptoms associated with COVID-19, the new and devastating pandemic. The hypothesis that immunity to bee venom could have a preventive effect was expressed and the authors of the Chinese survey suggested that the next step should be animal experiments on monkeys."
That's the opening paragraph in the research article, "Beekeepers Who Tolerate Bee Stings are Not Protected against SARS-CoV-2 Infections," published last month in the open-access journal.
The authors, German scientists Heidrun Männle, Jutta Hübner, and Karsten Münstedt, set out to explore the hypothesis of beekeeper immunity to the deadly virus. They asked all German beekeepers to complete an assessment form "which would summarize their experiences with COVID-19."
They found that two beekeepers died from COVID, and 45 were affected. One had been a beekeeper for 10 years and had no underlying health issues. He had developed "a level of tolerance to the effects of bee stings," they wrote. Not much information was available on the second beekeeper.
"The study shows that beekeepers are not immune to infections caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2," they summarized. "Especially, our data do not support the hypothesis that beekeepers are not affected by SARS-CoV-2 due to their exposure to bee stings and the associated immunity. The severity of the disease was not influenced by various variables like how long they had been a beekeeper, total number of bee stings received, number of bee stings received in the year 2020 and potentially allergic reactions to bee stings. However, the reaction to a bee sting (none versus mild swelling versus strong swelling) influenced the severity of two of the symptoms of a SARS-CoV-2 infection, namely exhaustion and sore throat pain, all of which were more pronounced in beekeepers who reported being more sensitive to bee stings. Beekeepers with less or a minimal reaction to bee stings were less likely to suffer from severe symptoms."
So, bottom line, their results "did not confirm the findings of the Chinese study." But there's this....
"However," the authors added, "since the antiviral effects of bee venom have been found in several studies, we cannot exclude that there could be a direct preventive or alleviating effect when bee venom is administered during the infection."
"The question why 121 patients of apitherapy clinic treated with bee venom did not develop symptoms associated with COVID-19 cannot be answered by our study," the authors acknowledged. "There could be a direct preventive or alleviating effect when bee venom is administered during the infection. In retrospect it would have been interesting to assess the time intervals between string exposure, onset of disease symptoms or contact to infected people."
Note that many questions are neither answered nor explored, and that this study was published before the development and arrival of vaccines.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Back in 2010, Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen (now emeritus) and yours truly of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology) decided that "The 12 Days of Christmas" ought to be replaced with insects.
Why not? "Entomology" means "insect science," and it's the holiday season so why not change "five gold rings" to "five golden bees?" And add some other insects and pests, as well.
Note that the original "Twelve Days of Christmas," published in 1780, features no insects. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Just a partridge in a pear tree, 2 turtle doves, 3 French hens, 4 calling birds, 5 gold rings, 6 geese-a-laying, 7 swans-a-swimming, 8 maids a'milking, 9 ladies dancing, 10 lords-a-leaping, and 11 pipers piping.
Didn't seem fair.
So "five gold rings" became "five golden bees." Mussen sang the innovative song at the department's holiday party. The lyrics went viral when U.S. News picked it up:
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a psyllid in a pear tree.
On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, 2 tortoises beetles and a psyllid in a pear tree
On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, 3 French flies, 2 tortoise beetles and a psyllid in a pear tree
On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, 4 calling cicadas, 3 French flies, 2 tortoise beetles and a psyllid in a pear tree
On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me 5 golden bees, 4 calling cicadas, 3 French flies, 2 tortoise beetles and a psyllid in a pear tree
On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me 6 lice a'laying, 5 golden bees, 4 calling cicadas, 3 French flies, 2 tortoise beetles and a psyllid in a pear tree
On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me 7 boatmen swimming, 6 lice a'laying, 5 golden bees, 4 calling cicadas, 3 French flies, 2 tortoise beetles and a psyllid in a pear tree
On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me 8 ants a'milking aphids, 7 boatmen swimming, 6 lice a'laying, 5 golden bees, 4 calling cicadas, 3 French flies, 2 tortoise beetles and a psyllid in a pear tree
On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me 9 mayflies dancing, 8 ants a'milking aphids, 7 boatmen swimming, 6 lice a'laying, 5 golden bees, 4 calling cicadas, 3 French flies, 2 tortoise beetles and a psyllid in a pear tree
On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me 10 locusts leaping, 9 mayflies dancing, 8 ants a'milking aphids, 7 boatmen swimming, 6 lice a'laying, 5 golden bees, 4 calling cicadas, 3 French flies, 2 tortoise beetles and a psyllid in a pear tree
On the 11th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me 11 queen bees piping, 10 locusts leaping, 9 mayflies dancing, 8 ants a'milking aphids, 7 boatmen swimming, 6 lice a'laying, 5 golden bees, 4 calling cicadas, 3 French flies, 2 tortoise beetles and a psyllid in a pear tree
On the 12th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me 12 deathwatch beetles drumming, 11 queen bees piping, 10 locusts leaping, 9 mayflies dancing, 8 ants a'milking aphids, 7 boatmen swimming, 6 lice a'laying, 5 golden bees, 4 calling cicadas, 3 French flies, 2 tortoise beetles and a psyllid in a pear tree
"On the 13th day of Christmas, Californians woke to see:
13 Kaphra beetles,
12 Diaprepes weevils,
11 citrus psyllids,
10 Tropilaelaps clareae,
9 melon fruit flies, 8 Aedes aegypti, 7 ash tree borers, 6
six spotted-wing Drosophila, 5
five gypsy moths, 4 Japanese beetles, 3 imported fire ants, 2 brown apple moths, and a medfly in a pear tree."
Today the song is still making the rounds, but with some different pests--pests that challenge the entomologists in the California Department of Food and Agriculture:
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a psyllid in a pear tree.
One the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, two peach fruit flies
On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, three false codling moths
On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, four peach fruit flies
On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, five gypsy moths
On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, six white striped fruit flies
On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, seven imported fire ants
On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, eight longhorn beetles
On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, nine melon fruit flies
On the 10th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, ten brown apple moths
On the 11th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, eleven citrus psyllids
On the 12th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, twelve guava fruit flies.
On the 13th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, thirteen Japanese beetles
And, then, of course, there's that pesty Varroa destructor (varroa mite), known as the No. 1 enemy of beekeepers. This external parasitic mite not only sucks a bee's lifeblood, but can transmit as many as five bee debilitating viruses. A native of Asia, the varroa mite arrived in the United States in 1987 and is now found throughout much of the world, wreaking havoc with bee colonies.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
He's a mantis. A masked mantis.
And Santa Claus does not DRIVE a sleigh.
The jolly ol' gent RIDES a mantis. A masked mantis.
Take it from UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty members Robert and Lynn Kimsey.
A masked mantis with Santa astride graces their front yard in Davis. The mantis? It's probably a Stagmomantis californica, native to the Western United States—and the Kimsey domicile.
Unfounded (and unfunded) scientific research indicates that passersby have laughed at the mantis, but it is not known whether anyone has ever called him names or banned him from playing reindeer games. A National Institutes of Health grant may determine that.
Rumor has it, though, that S. Claus--aka Kris Kringle or that Pudgy-North-Pole-Resident-Who-Never-Met-a-Cookie-He-Didn't-Like--did approach the red-nosed mantis and mumble something like “with your nose so bright, won't you guide my sleigh tonight?” Or maybe it was “Hey, buddy, can I hitch a ride?”
Anyway, the red-nosed mantis, not known for keen auditory perceptions, consented.
Of course, all the reindeer loved him and shouted out with glee that he would "go down in his-tor-ee." That's because Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen and Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen wanted to get out of work. Who wants to pull a sleigh that defies the maximum federal gross vehicle weight of 80,000 pounds?
But what, pray tell, will happen if the preying mantis gets...umm...hungry along the way?
Professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and an authority on insects, and Robert Kimsey, who specializes in forensic entomology, caution that children should NOT leave milk and cookies (not even luscious chocolate chirp cookies made with crunchy crickets) on Christmas Eve as the red-nose mantis prefers live crickets, mealworms, bees, beetles, syrphid flies, grasshoppers, butterflies and caterpillars, thank you.
You're welcome.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
“You're never too far away from a spider; a spider is always watching you," said Bond, who is the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. "They are always there. There are lots of them on the planet. They're absolutely everywhere."
Yes, spiders are everywhere and there's even a spider-themed pencil case to be available soon in the Bohart Museum's online gift shop. Dozens of insect- and spider-themed gifts are already available, proceeds of which benefit the scientific and educational activities of the Bohart Museum.
The Bohart, home of a global collection of nearly eight million insect specimens, houses the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity of the state's deserts, mountains, coast, and the Great Central Valley. It maintains one of the world's largest collections of tardigrades. (See Bug Squad blog.)
It also provides a live "petting zoo," comprised of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas (in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus), but you can't see them now because of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.
The Bohart masks both feature the California state insect, the dogface butterfly. "There is a white one with the stylized, yellow dogface logo and then a dark blue with a logo in golden yellow (UC Davis colors)," Professor Keller said. The pencil cases also will be arriving soon, she added.
Said Professor Kimsey: “Your support enables us to fulfill our mission of documenting and supporting research in biodiversity, educating and inspiring others about insects, and providing state-of-the-art information to the community."
The Bohart officials have compiled gift ideas for all ages:
- Bohart t-shirts starting at size 2T
- Stuffed animals (the arthropod kind)
- Tardigrade backpack clip toy
- Toys from Insect Lore
- Books
- Stickers
- Insect net
- Edible insect snacks and candy
Gift ideas for tweens/teens:
- Hoodie with the California flag re-envisioned with a "water bear" (Tardigrade)
- Bohart T-shirts
- Beetle wing earrings
- Temporary tattoos
- Bohart sticker for water bottle/lap top/bike
- Collecting equipment
- Information on Bio Boot Camps, our summer camps for middle and high schoolers
Gift ideas for teachers:
- Mug with CA state insect
- Clever, instructional sticker for in-class spider removal
- Insect Lore models of life cycles
- Posters of California insects (dragonflies, State insects, Central Valley butterflies)
- Bohart book : The Story of the Dogface Butterfly (includes life cycle info and a civic-minded 4th grade class!)
- A one-hour, in-class insect presentation or an educational material loan (contact tabyang@ucdavis.edu to inquire about this- some restrictions may apply)
Gift ideas for adults:
- Membership
- Hand-turned, lathed pens
- Jewelry
- Books (used and new)
- Note cards
- A net to catch insects
- Clever, instructional sticker for in-home spider removal
Gift ideas for college students:
- Hoodie with the California flag re-envisioned with a "water bear" (Tardigrade)
- Bohart sticker for water bottle/lap top/bike
- Insect collecting equipment
- Jewelry (everything from $1 to $36)
Folks can also donate to the effort of raising funds to purchase a large tardigarde (waterbear) sculpture in front of the museum. "This sculpture will advance the museum's educational role and will increase the museum's visibility," Kimsey said. See https://uk.gofundme.com/f/waterbear-sculpture.
For more information, email the Bohart Museum at bmuseum@ucdavis.edu or access the website at http://bohart.ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The publisher, Princeton University Press, has contracted with Asakura Publishing Company for the right to translate the 480-page book, Biodemography: An Introduction to Concepts and Methods into the Japanese language.
“This is a neat development, given that I suspect the Japanese publishers are pretty selective, given the effort and resources needed to translate a technical book like ours,” commented Carey, a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology who is known as one of the founding fathers of biodemography and a global authority on arthropod demography.
Asakura, founded in 1929, is an academic and professional book publisher that specializes in mathematics, statistics, physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, medicine, agriculture, humanities, economics, psychology, and others.
The book, which integrates biology, mathematics and demography, “sets the standard as the definitive text for the important, emerging field of biodemography,” according to Robert Peterson, professor of entomology at Montana State University, and a past president of the 7000-member Entomological Society of America (ESA).
Carey pointed out that the interdisciplinary field unites the natural science of biology with the social science of human demography.
The book is considered an essential resource for demographers, epidemiologists, gerontologists, and health professionals as well as ecologists, population biologists, entomologists, and conservation biologists.
A recent review in the winter edition of The American Entomologist called it "an ambitious integration of concepts, models, and tools from the fields of biodemography (population demographics of non-human species) and classical human demography, which is considered a social science. Given the obvious conceptual and mathematical connections between the two fields, one might assume they are natural bedfellows."
"In reality," wrote reviewer Jennifer C. Geib of the Department of Biology faculty, Appalachian State University, Boone, N.C., "integration of the two fields has been a decades-long endeavor, involving think-tanks of eminent individuals from all related fields."
Geib praised the "clarity of the writing" and "unusually clear illustrative examples and visualizations."
She added: "I've always known that Thomas Malthus' thinking about population growth and food supply influenced Darwin, but I had never read Malthus' own words. I literally laughed out loud at his articulation of the 'Dismal' and 'Utterly Dismal' theorems— no wonder Darwin was also struck by them."
Geib summed it up this way: "Even if this isn't the required textbook for your population biology or demography course, anyone who teaches such a class needs this as a reference to improve their instruction. This would also be an excellent general reference for anyone (such as an ecologist) who is newly delving into biodemography as an expansion of their work with particular species or interactions."
A recent review in Cell Press explored the definition of biodemography, commenting that "Biodemography is a bridge between biological theories and demography and relies on strong methodological foundations. "By definition, it already integrates several fields of research, but the integration of additional research areas to this interdisciplinary science could help strengthen our understanding of demographic dynamics," wrote Marlène Gamelon and Hannah Froy. "With this book, the authors offer biologists an accessible and practical overview of the demographic approaches that may offer insights into a range of important biological questions."
Gamelon and Froy, both with the Centre for Biodiversity Dynamics, Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway, referenced the 1973 essay of Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light Of Evolution."
They wrote: "Dobzhansky famously stated that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Evolution is driven by the propagation of genes within and among populations, which depends on age-specific patterns of fertility, mortality, and migration. Therefore, it can also be said that nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of demography."
Bottom line: this book is a must-read. We expect it to be translated into other languages as well.