Robert E. Page Jr.

That would be world-renowned honey bee geneticist Robert Eugene (“Rob”) Page Jr., the 2018 recipient of the Thomas and Nina Leigh Distinguished Alumni Award, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. His work includes the book, The Spirit of the Hive: The Mechanisms of Social Evolution, published by Harvard University Press in 2013.

Page will deliver the Leigh seminar--appropriately titled "In Search of the Spirit of the Hive: a 30-Year Quest"--at 4 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 29 in the International House, 10 College Park, Davis.

With close ties to UC Davis, Page received his doctorate in entomology from UC Davis and served as a professor and chair of the UC Davis entomology department before capping his academic career as the Arizona State University (ASU) provost. He maintained a honey bee breeding program managed by bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, UC Davis, for 24 years, from 1989 to 2015.

Now provost emeritus of ASU and Regents Professor since 2015, he continues his research, teaching and public service in both Arizona and California and has residences in both states. He plans to move to California in December.

Page focuses his research on honey bee behavior and population genetics, particularly the evolution of complex social behavior. One of his most salient contributions to science was to construct the first genomic map of the honey bee, which sparked a variety of pioneering contributions not only to insect biology but to genetics at large.

His contributions to the California beekeeping industry--notably the Page-Laidlaw Closed Population Breeding theory--are legendary, says bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey of Washington State University and formerly of UC Davis, where she managed the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility.  "This has offered a practical system of stock improvement for honey bees, used worldwide.  My career has been based upon applying this theory to develop and maintaining a population of Carniolan bees, now in their 36th generation."

"Often there is a large gap between research and industry interests and the impacts can be slow to be realized,"Cobey said.  "The beauty of this system is that it is practical and addresses the unique challenges of honey bee stock improvement."

Traditional animal breeding models do not apply well to honey bees, Cobey explained. "Queens mate in flight with numerous drones and selection is based upon complex behaviors at the colony level. Rob's work in the behavior of social insects and contributions toward mapping the honey bee genomic opened new doors in bee research."

A native of Bakersfield, Kern County, Page received his bachelor's degree in entomology, with a minor in chemistry, from San Jose State University in 1976. After receiving his doctorate from UC Davis, he began his career at The Ohio State University, in 1986 and then returned to Davis in 1989 to accept an associate professor position in 1989. He served as department chair from 1999 to 2004, when he was recruited to be the founding director of the School of Life Sciences of ASU. His career advanced to dean of Life Sciences; vice provost and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; and provost.

 Among his many honors:

• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
• Awardee of the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award (the Humboldt Prize - the highest honor given by the German government to foreign scientists).
• Foreign Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• Elected to the Leopoldina - the German National Academy of Sciences (the longest continuing academy in the world)
• Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
• Fellow of the Entomological Society of America.
• Awardee of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Fellowship.
• Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.
• Fellow, Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation, Munich, Germany, September 2017-August 2018

The Leigh seminar memorializes cotton entomologist Thomas Frances Leigh (1923-1993), an international authority on the biology, ecology and management of arthropod pests affecting cotton production. During his 37-year UC Davis career, based at the Shafter Research and Extension Center, also known as the U.S. Cotton Research Station, Leigh researched pest and beneficial arthropod management in cotton fields, and host plant resistance in cotton to insects, mites, nematodes and diseases.  In his memory, his family and associates established the Leigh Distinguished Alumni Seminar Entomology Fund at the UC Davis Department of Entomology. When his wife, Nina, passed in 2002, the alumni seminar became known as the Thomas and Nina Distinguished Alumni Seminar.

For information on the Rob Page seminar, contact Nicole Brunn at nbrunn@ucdavis.edu. A reception is planned for 3 p.m.

The katydid, as green as the leaves around it, is feeding on a yellow rose. It is paying no attention to the circling honey bees.

The bees want nectar, not an encounter with a critter far bigger than they are.

The katydid slowly moves from one devastated blossom to a bud.

The honey bees head off for other blossoms.

Such was the scene in our pollinator garden in Vacaville, Calif. last weekend with a fork-tailed bush katydid claiming a yellow rose.

According to the University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM), the fork-tailed bush katydid, Scudderia furcata, is a pest of fruit such as citrus, pear, nectarine, apricots, plums, blueberries and the like.

It also seems to like our yellow rose, "Sparkle and Shine," a variety related to the "Julia Child Rose." We purchased it back in 2013 at the annual May rose sale hosted by the California Center for Urban Horticulture (CCUH) at Foundation Plant Services, on Hopkins Road, west of the central campus. 

Honey bees generally don't like commercial roses (they prefer nectar-rich plants like lavender, African blue basil, sedum, sunflowers, bee balm and salvia), but they do this one.

So does the katydid.

Talk about "crafty"--as in cunning or sneaky--insects.

Ever seen a praying mantis ambushing a cabbage white butterfly?

Or an assassin bug targeting a spotted cucumber beetle?

Or European paper wasps attacking a Gulf Fritillary butterfly?

And, how about the other kind of "crafty" insects--like honey bees and European paper wasps creating those  intricate nests?

"Crafty Insects" will set the theme for the Bohart Museum of Entomology's open house from 1 to 4 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 22 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on the UC Davis campus. The event is free and family friendly.

“We are hoping to have two parallel exhibits--one where we show crafty insects and then one where we are asking people to bring insect-themed crafts from their home--a plate with a cicada on it, or mug shaped like a wasp or we have a bee-shaped stapler for example,” said Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator. “We'll have a place for them to display their crafts.”

“Crafty insects can be interpreted in two ways,” Yang commented. "‘Crafty' can be makers such as caddis fly larvae, case bearer moths, and potter wasps. The other crafty interpretation is sneaky, so our live orchid mantid,  the dead leaf butterfly like Kallima inachus will be on display.” Activities are to include “spot the flower fly versus bee activity” and “spot the assassin fly versus bumble bee activity.” 

For the family crafts, visitors will be painting rocks that can be hidden on campus or elsewhere. The Bohart Museum officials were inspired by Yolo Rocks and Solano Rocks, but a similar organization on campus, UC Davis Rocks, launched a similar activity last spring. It is the brainchild of Kim Pearson and Martha Garrison, who work in the arts administrative group in the College of Letters and Science. 

Saturday, Sept. 22 is also move-in weekend for UC Davis students, so the Bohart Museum expects a lot of new people exploring the campus.

Bohart associates Jeff Smith, curator of the butterfly and moth exhibit and naturalist-photographer Greg Kareofelas will be on hand to shows the collection.

The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis,  houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It is also the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity.  In addition to the petting zoo, the museum features a year-around gift shop, which is stocked with T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy.

For more information, access the Bohart Museum website at http://bohart.ucdavis.edu or call (530) 752-0493 or email bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.

It was bound to happen.

A "real" honey bee flying alongside "fake" bees on a bee crossing sign.

We photographed this honey bee (below) at 1/1000 of second (with a Nikon D500 and a 105mm lens with  the f-stop set at 16 and ISO at 800), but honey bee flight is truly amazing.

Back in the 1934 French scientists August Magnan and André Sainte-Lague calculated that honey bees shouldn't be able to lift off, much less fly at all.  However, they presumed bee wings are stable, like airplane wings, when in fact, they're not. Honey bees flap and rotate their wings some 240 times per second, according to research, "Short-Amplitude High-Frequency Wing Strokes Determine the Aerodynamics of Honeybee Flight," published in December 2005 in the Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The researchers, from the California Institute of Technology, pointed out that a fruit fly is 80 times smaller than a honey bee and flaps its wings 200 times each second, while the much larger honey bee flaps its wings 240 times every second. To stay aloft, a honey bee uses short wing strokes of less than 90 degrees and a high number of flaps.

"This flapping, along with the supple nature of the wings themselves, allows a bee--or any flying insect, for that matter--to create a vortex that lifts it into the air," explained David Biello in a Nov. 29, 2005 piece in Scientific American.

Or, technically, as the researchers wrote in their abstract: "Most insects are thought to fly by creating a leading-edge vortex that remains attached to the wing as it translates through a stroke. In the species examined so far, stroke amplitude is large, and most of the aerodynamic force is produced halfway through a stroke when translation velocities are highest. Here we demonstrate that honeybees use an alternative strategy, hovering with relatively low stroke amplitude (≈90°) and high wingbeat frequency (≈230 Hz). When measured on a dynamically scaled robot, the kinematics of honeybee wings generate prominent force peaks during the beginning, middle, and end of each stroke, indicating the importance of additional unsteady mechanisms at stroke reversal.

"When challenged to fly in low-density heliox, bees responded by maintaining nearly constant wingbeat frequency while increasing stroke amplitude by nearly 50%. We examined the aerodynamic consequences of this change in wing motion by using artificial kinematic patterns in which amplitude was systematically increased in 5° increments. To separate the aerodynamic effects of stroke velocity from those due to amplitude, we performed this analysis under both constant frequency and constant velocity conditions. The results indicate that unsteady forces during stroke reversal make a large contribution to net upward force during hovering but play a diminished role as the animal increases stroke amplitude and flight power. We suggest that the peculiar kinematics of bees may reflect either a specialization for increasing load capacity or a physiological limitation of their flight muscles."

And the (bee) beat goes on...even with that heavy load of nectar or pollen...