- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Zeldner, who died in 2018 at age 71, would have been proud to see the family business he founded, Z Specialty Food, develop into a 20,000 square-foot facility at 1221 Harter Way, Woodland.
It was his dream.
It includes a processing plant, The Hive (tasting room for honey and mead, a gift shop and a conference room), an outdoor courtyard and a two-acre pollinator garden.
He particularly would have been proud to see the floor-to-ceiling hive decor in The Hive: the very bee boxes he tended to when he visited his apiary. As many beekeepers do, he wrote his observations on the boxes. You can still see his notations.
Zeldner worked as a commercial beekeeper and studied beekeeping at UC Davis before founding the Moon Shine Trading Company in 1979. That was the beginning of Z Specialty Food.
But it all began with yellow starthistle. "He loved it so much that he began giving it away to his friends, and quickly realized he was going broke doing so," remembers his widow, Amina Harris, the director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center.
His son, Joshua "Josh" Zeldner, who now runs the company--he calls himself "the nectar director"--wrote in an eulogy: "He helped introduce consumers to the wide range of honeys not found in the bear-shaped squeeze bottles at the supermarket."
"Born in Buffalo, New York, Ishai was a fourth-generation food merchant, and grew up in the specialty food business," Josh wrote. "His family owned Zeldner's Market, which specialized in exotic game. Ishai spent his Saturdays and summers as a kid working in the store, learning how to butcher an array of animals, and, most importantly, how to successfully run a business."
"After college, Ishai spent several transformational years living on Kibbutz Beit Hashita in Israel. The kibbutz beekeeper chose Ishai to assist him based on his size and strength; neither man had any idea how much it would influence the rest of his life. It was there that he not only learned how to keep bees, but fell in love with beekeeping and honey. He also took the name Ishai. He returned to Buffalo to assist with the management and sale of his family's business at the sudden death of his father. This significant gesture ensured that his mother could afford to comfortably retire."
Ishai's vision was to "bring top quality varietal honey to the table," Josh wrote. And of course, yellow starthistle was "the first one to capture his imagination and his palate."
"Soon after, he married Amina Harris who ran the business by his side in Winters and then Davis. Together they raised two children – Shoshana and Joshua. Ishai taught them both how to appreciate honey straight from the hive and keep bees of their own. Together, Ishai and Amina created a line of nationally-recognized award-winning specialty food products. Today, Moon Shine Trading Company is part of the family of Z Specialty Food, LLC, based in Woodland, California. Z Specialty is known throughout the country for offering over 30 varietal honeys selected from across North America." (See eulogy.)
Fast forward to today. Plans are underway--buzzing, really--for a gala family event. The Hive will host a Nature Day celebration, free and open to the public, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, April 2. It's a day to emphasize the importance of bees, honey, pollination and conservation. The public can tour the processing plant, taste honey and mead, explore the gift shop, sit in the outdoor courtyard and visit the pollinator garden. Workshops, games, a display of bee specimens by the Bohart Museum of Entomology, and a photo display of honey bees are planned. Dogs are welcome, too! (See schedule)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Applications close Jan. 30.
Apprentice assistant is the first level of the trainer programs offered by CAMBP), launched and directed by Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. Other levels are apprentice, journey and master.
What does an apprentice assistant do?
As the website says: "The apprentice assistant level of the CAMBP explores the art and skill of beekeeping prior to keeping bees, even if you live in an area where beekeeping is not possible. This level of the CAMBP is the perfect science-based introduction to everything you need to know in order to keep safe, healthy bees. If you cannot keep bees at your location, and want an ‘in-hive' experience, the CAMBP can recommend options. The CAMBP requires 10 hours of volunteer service and 12 hours of continuing education each year so members maintain and expand their beekeeping knowledge and skills."
On the application form, you'll be asked:
- What inspires you to learn more about honey bees and beekeeping?
- Do you currently keep bees?
- Are you a member of a local bee club?
- What, in your opinion, is the biggest challenge facing bees and beekeeping today?
- Are you capable of performing 10 hours of volunteer service and 12 hours of continuing education on bees and beekeeping as an apprentice assistant in your first year in the CAMBP?
The cost to enroll in the class is $50. At the onset, accepted students will receive links to three live, online study halls, facilitated by CAMBP staff, to meet other new beekeepers and ask questions in preparation for the tests, which will be administered in person or virtually via Zoom (depending on COVID-19 restrictions.)
The class officially starts in March, according to program manager Wendy Mather, with final exams scheduled for September. Students must score at least 80 percent to become an official apprentice assistant. They then will have access to the CAMBP member network; webinars; and CAMPB member news. And if they wish, they can apply for the next level, apprentice.
"One cool factor about apprentice assistant is if you decide that beekeeping isn't for you, you still get a certificate stating you've passed the 'theory' portion of the course if you choose only to write the online exam and satisfy your curiosity about humanity's only sweet treat purveying insect," Mather said. "It's not mandatory to get into a hive."
More information is available on the apprentice assistant website or contact camasterbee@gmail.com.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
We've all read stories dealing with "A Day in the Life" of principals, presidents and princesses. We're probably familiar with The Beatles' song "A Day in the Life," the final song on their Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album.
But do you know what's it's like to be a queen bee for a day? A virgin queen bee?
You will if you attend the Wednesday, Feb. 3 seminar by Extension apiculturist/professor David Tarpy of North Carolina State University on Wednesday, Feb. 3 in 122 Briggs Hall, Kleiber Hall Drive, UC Davis. He will speak on "Young Regality: a Day in the Life of a Virgin Queen Bee" from 12:10 to 1 p.m. It's part of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's noonhour seminars and is open to all interested persons. It also will be recorded for later posting on UCTV.
His host is Elina Niño, Extension apiculturist, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Tarpy, a honey bee biologist, joined the North Carolina State University faculty in 2003. He received his bachelor's degree in biology in 1993 from Hobart College; his master's degree in biology (advised by David Fletcher) in 1995 from Bucknell University; and his doctorate in entomology in 2000 from UC Davis, with major professor Robert Page, former chair of the Department of Entomology and now university provost emeritus and Foundation chair of Life Sciences, Arizona State University.
Tarpy went on to complete his postdoctoral fellowship (advised by Tom Seeley) at Cornell University, New York.
Tarpy focuses his research on the biology and behavior of honey bee queens—using techniques including field manipulations, behavioral observation, instrumental insemination, and molecular genetics—in order to better improve the overall health of queens and their colonies.
Specific research projects include understanding the effect of the polyandrous mating strategy of queen bees on colony disease resistance, using molecular methods to determine the genetic structure within honey bee colonies, and the determining the regulation of reproduction at the individual and colony levels.
Tarpy's work has provided some of the best empirical evidence that multiple mating by queens confers multiple and significant benefits to colonies through increased genetic diversity of their nestmates.
More recently, his lab has focused on the reproductive potential of commercially produced queens, testing their genetic diversity and mating success in an effort to improve queen quality. He recently worked with the California Bee Breeders' Association, headquartered in Orland. Many of the bee breeders sent him queen bees to be tested.
He wrote a piece for North Carolina Extension on why honey bee colonies are dying.
For further information on his seminar, contact Niño at elnino@ucdavis.edu. While in the area, Tarpy also plans to address the Marin County Beekeepers' Association on Thursday, Feb.4.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
She's the beekeeper/graduate student at Harvard's Graduate School of Design who traveled through almond orchards in California's Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys in May 2014 to illustrate and pen a book about the spatial relationship between honey bees and almonds.
We wrote about her in a Feb. 11th Bug Squad blog.
The book, "Almond and the Bee," is now a reality. See http://blur.by/1CmYr3h. She's offering the book at cost ($9) and donating about $2 from the sale of each book to benefit the bees. The benefactor will be either the Xerces Society or Project Apis m.
Stephanie, a master of landscape architecture candidate who keeps bees on the rooftop of her school building, shared her marvelous 46-page digital story, http://almondandbee.com, with us earlier this year.
"I was inspired to create socially engaging and ecological performative places and hope to bring my passion for enhancing natural systems to the urban environment," she told us. "As a designer, I developed an interest in pollination during my second semester at the Harvard Graduate School of Design--I used the idea of pollination to attract people and pollinators to a park redesign, and developed a planting palette and a promenade that would do so."
Stephanie received a grant to finance her project. She spent a week in "almond country," meeting with experts at UC Berkeley and UC Davis, the Almond Board, the Blue Diamond Cooperative, beekeepers, almond growers, and almond growers/beekeepers.
Pollination ecologist Neal Williams, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, was among those who sat down with her and talked almonds and bees. He filled her on his research and offered tips on people to meet and places to see.
"The shape of the project developed during my fall 2014 semester," she related. "I thought an illustrated story would allow me to combine my photographs, maps, and drawings, with found historical images in an engaging and accessible form...The story is about how that came to be, but it's also an argument for holistic thinking in agriculture that could be both cultural and economically significant."
Two key sentences on the first page of http://almondandbee.com beckon the reader: "The almond and the bee. The spatial relationship of the orchard, bee, and dwelling through time."
Almonds and bees need each other, she points out. California has more than 900,000 acres of almonds, and each acre requires two colonies for pollination. And every year some 1.6 million colonies, or approximately 60 percent of the nation's colonies, are trucked to California.
"The relationship between almond growers and migratory beekeepers are in many ways analogous to that of the fruit tree and the bee—one is sedentary and one is mobile, but both depend on one another," Stephanie writes.
In her book, she traces the modern history of the honey bee, touches on traditional beekeeping methods, mentions the invention of the Langsroth hive in 1851, and takes a peek at the future of beekeeping and almond orchards.
In February 2015 we described it as "an informative, creative and well-designed (digital) story." Now it's March 2015 and it's 'an informative, creative and well-designed book," with proceeds aimed at helping our troubled honey bees.
Well done, Stephanie!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
That's a question frequently asked of Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Fact is, he's an "unbee-lievable" wealth of information. The honey bee guru has served as Extension apiculturist since 1976 and writes a newsletter, from the UC apiaries and Bee Briefs, both posted on his website. When Mussen retires in June of 2014 (yes, the "R" word), he will be sorely missed.
One of the latest questions:
"A few weeks ago, the day before I left on a trip, I noticed decreased activity in my top bar hive. I looked in and saw very few bees, the queen and these dead pupae. There was no bad smell or bodies in or around the hive. When I returned and examined the hive yesterday, all the honey had been robbed (as I expected), there were only two dead bees on the floor and the remaining bee bread. I haven't looked into my three Langstroth hives yet, but the activity level looks normal. Do you have any ideas on what killed the colony, whether I need to take any special precautions regarding my other hives and whether I need to treat the top bar hive in someway before putting another colony in next spring?"
The concerned beekeeper attached a photo in his email.
Mussen responded: "No, I cannot tell you what killed the bees by looking at a photograph. But, there are clues. First, very few things happen in a colony that results in black bees. The most common cause is 'chilled brood.' That means that the brood was not incubated at the proper temperature and finally succumbed to cooler temperatures, turning black during the process. Depending upon when that happened, the pupae would be in various stages of completion to adult bees. The second set of possibilities revolves around infections with viruses. Although it is called "black queen cell virus," that virus can infect and discolor worker bees. A second RNA virus that leads to black bees is 'chronic bee paralysis.' In that case, though, it is adult bees that get 'black and greasy.' Actually, the bees have had their hairs scraped off by their nest mates. When truly bald, the exoskeleton is black and the cuticle is waxy (greasy). So, it sounds like your colony failed to thrive for some reason. The bees could no longer adequately feed or incubate the brood (lack of nurse bees?). Then, things just spiraled down. Robbing was included in the mix when the colony became weakened. Since I have no idea what put the colony out of business, I would start, again, next season using the same combs. Wait until it is warm and a good pollen flow is going on."
Failure to thrive? How many times have we heard that? It applies to bees, too.