Yes, he began his career studying honey bees.

The late Robbin Thorp, the renowned UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology and global bee authority who will be memorialized at a celebration of life on Friday, Oct. 11 at 6 p.m. in the Putah Creek Lodge, UC Davis, began his career studying honey bees.

Professor Thorp, who served as a member of the UC Davis entomology faculty for 30 years, from 1964-1994, continued to engage in research, teaching and public service until a few weeks before his death on June 7.  In his retirement, he co-authored two books, both in 2014: Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists.

Thorp was a tireless advocate of pollinator species protection and conservation and known for his expertise, dedication and passion in protecting native pollinators, especially bumble bees, and for his teaching, research and public service. He was an authority on pollination ecology, ecology and systematics of honey bees, bumble bees, vernal pool bees, conservation of bees, native bees and crop pollination, and bees of urban gardens and agricultural landscapes.

The distinguished emeritus professor was also an authority on honey bees.

Said Eric Mussen, Extension apiculturist emeritus: "We should not forget that Robbin originally was hired to work on honey bees, and he did. His greatest area of expertise was the use of honey bees in almond pollination. Robbin determined that until the colonies reached the population size of six frames of bees, they did not have enough spare bees to serve as foragers (pollinate almonds) since they were all needed to keep the brood warm."

"He also noted that the amount of pollen collected by the bees in a colony was pretty much in direct proportion to colony size, peaking at between 10 and 12 frames of bees," Mussen said. "It was obvious to Robbin that the bees still visited almond blossoms for nectar, days after there was no pollen left in the flowers and the stigmata were no longer young enough to be pollinated. Other studies determined which blossoms along the branches were pollinated earlier and later during the season. All of those studies were very well designed and the results contributed significantly to our recommendations to growers and beekeepers for obtaining maximum benefit from the bees."

“Robbin's scientific achievements during his retirement rival the typical career productivity of many other academic scientists,” said Steve Nadler, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. “His contributions in support of understanding bee biodiversity and systematics are a true scientific legacy.” (See more about Robbin Thorp)

Robbin Thorp was a treasure, a gem in the entomological world of bees and beyond.

A life well-lived.

Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, was a global authority on bees and he generously shared his expertise with others.

"Robbin had a long, well-respected career in pollination biology and bee taxonomy, but when he retired, he became even more engaged," said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at UC Davis. "He became the go-to person for everyone working on pollination in the western states. Many careers were made with his assistance."

"I've known Robbin since I was a graduate student at UC Davis," Kimsey said. "Even though he wasn't my major professor, my project was on bees and he was incredibly helpful and supportive. His enthusiasm about pollinators and bees in particular actually grew after he retired, and he continued helping students and researchers and was the backbone of so much research. His support and kindness was matched by his undemanding assistance and expertise. What a terrible loss to his family and to the research and conservation communities."

Now Kimsey is coordinating the celebration of life for Thorp. It will take place from 6 to 8 p.m., Friday, Oct. 11 in the Putah Creek Lodge, located on Putah Creek Lodge Drive, southwest section of the UC Davis Arboretum.

Thorp, 85, passed away Friday, June 7 at this home in Davis. He would have been 86 on Aug. 26.

Thorp, a member of the UC Davis entomology faculty for 30 years, from 1964-1994, achieved emeritus status in 1994 but continued to engage in research, teaching and public service until a few weeks before his death.

A tireless advocate of pollinator species protection and conservation, Thorp was known for his expertise, dedication and passion in protecting native pollinators, especially bumble bees, and for his teaching, research and public service. He was an authority on pollination ecology, ecology and systematics of honey bees, bumble bees, vernal pool bees, conservation of bees, native bees and crop pollination, and bees of urban gardens and agricultural landscapes.

“Robbin's scientific achievements during his retirement rival the typical career productivity of many other academic scientists,” said Steve Nadler, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. “His contributions in support of understanding bee biodiversity and systematics are a true scientific legacy.

In his retirement, Thorp co-authored two books Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University, 2014) and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday, 2014). Locally, he was active in research projects and open houses at the Bohart Museum of Entomology and the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee garden on Bee Biology Road operated by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. He detected and identified more than 80 species of bees in the haven. 

Colleague Norman Gary, UC Davis emeritus professor of entomology, earlier said that "I doubt that there is anyone else in the world who can compete with his expertise in the systematics of the 20,000 species of bees on this earth."

"Robbin was one of the few people in North America who could identify bees down to the species level,” said former graduate student Katharina Ullmann, director of the UC Davis Student Farm, Agricultural Sustainability Institute, and a UC Davis alumnus (doctorate in entomology).

Born Aug. 26, 1933 in Benton Harbor, Mich., Robbin received his bachelor of science degree in zoology (1955) and his master's degree in zoology (1957) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He earned his doctorate in entomology in 1964 from UC Berkeley, the same year he joined the UC Davis entomology faculty. He taught courses from 1970 to 2006 on insect classification, general entomology, natural history of insects, field entomology, California insect diversity, and pollination ecology.

Every summer from 2002 to 2018,  Thorp volunteered his time and expertise to teach at The Bee Course, an annual workshop sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and held at the Southwestern Research Station, Portal, Ariz. The intensive 9-day workshop, considered the world's premiere native bee biology and taxonomic course, is geared for conservation biologists, pollination ecologists and other biologists.

Highly honored by his peers, Thorp was named a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco in 1986; recipient of the Edward A. Dickson Emeriti Professorship of UC Davis in 2010; and recipient of the UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Award in 2015. Other honors included: member of the UC Davis Bee Team that won PBESA's Team Award in 2013. In addition, he was a past president (2010-2011) of the Davis Botanical Society, and former chair (1992-2011) of the Advisory Committee for the Jepson Prairie Reserve, UC Davis/Natural Reserve System.

Professor Neal Williams, who organized a symposium in Thorp's honor at the 2019 Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America (PBESA) meeting in San Diego, said: ‘Through his tireless efforts in research, advocacy and education, he has inspired a new generation of bee researchers…I like many others, feel truly honored, to have received the mentoring of Robbin and to have him as a colleague.”

Williams said the PBESA symposium was “perhaps the greatest honor one can receive from close colleagues--a special symposium honoring him and his contributions to the field of bee biology and pollination. We designed the symposium to honor the impact of Dr. Thorp, on the field of bee biology and conservation, but at the same time present innovative research that brings together bee and pollination biology researchers."

An authority on the critically imperiled Franklin's bumble bee, Bombus franklini, Thorp began monitoring the bumble bee population in 1998 in its narrow distribution range of southern Oregon and northern California. He had not seen it since 2006 and was instrumental in placing the bee on the Red List of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). He was the former regional co-chair of the North America IUCN Bumblebee Specialist Group.

In August of 2016 a documentary crew from CNN, headed by John Sutter, followed Thorp to a meadow where Thorp last saw Franklin's bumble bee. Sutter wrote about Thorp, then 82, in a piece he titled "The Old Man and the Bee," a spinoff of Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea."

His wife, Joyce, 84, preceded him in death on Dec. 9, 2018. Survivors include three children, Kelly, Katie and Jeff, and stepchildren Donna Gary and Steve Gary.

Those who plan to attend the celebration of life may make reservations at https://bit.ly/2lLG20E. For more information on the event, contact coordinator Lynn Kimsey at lskimsey@ucdavis.edu.

A monarch butterfly took flight at the third annual Butterfly Summit at Annie's Annuals and Perennials in Richmond, an event co-sponsored by the Bay Area-based Pollinator Posse.

No monarchs this time of year, you say?

Well, this one was little Saathiya Patel, 4, riding the shoulders of her Pollinator Posse-father, Seth Newton Patel of Oakland. When he tossed her in the air, she spread her wings!

What a joy to see!

Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, delivered his second annual presentation on butterflies, this one on "Are Butterflies Heralds of the Insect Apocalypse?" (more about that later).

Meanwhile, it's good to see the Pollinator Posse, co-founded by Tora Rocha and Terry Smith, helping out our beleaguered butterflies and native bees.

Rocha and Smith formed the Pollinator Posse (see their Facebook page) in Oakland in 2013 to create pollinator-friendly landscaping in urban settings and to foster appreciation of local ecosystems through outreach, education and direct action.

Rocha, a retired Oakland parks supervisor, says that eco-friendly landscape techniques are at the heart of their work. "We teach respect for the creatures which keep Oakland--and the world--blooming."

"We envision a day when life-enhancing, thought-inspiring green spaces will grace every corner of the city and the world beyond," Rocha says.

This is a dedicated group, committed to making a difference, and what a difference they are making! Their activities include rearing monarchs and other butterflies; encouraging folks to plant the host plant and nectar sources; showing children how to make bee condos or bee hotels--AirBeeNBees--for native bees; and hosting "Tees for Bees," at which youths visit golf courses to hit pollinator friendly seed balls "which help make the courses more habitable for beneficial insects," Rocha says. (See news story on Best Garden Whiz and Butterfly Savior: Victoria 'Tora' Rocha.)

Tora Rocha and her fellow Pollinator Posse love it when monarchs take flight. So do we. And so does Pollinator Posse member Seth Newton Patel and his daughter, Saathiya, already a monarch enthusiast at age 4.

Why silver digger bees are like gold...

Remember those "long lost" silver digger bees found last week at the San Francisco Presidio? They hadn't been seen in large aggregations for nearly a century.

And yet there they were in the newly restored sand dunes at the Presidio, a former military post now owned and operated by the National Park Service.

UC Davis entomologist Leslie Saul-Gershenz lent her expertise when a volunteer discovered the thriving colonies of bees. An authority on digger bees, she confirmed that they are Habropoda miserabilis and were probably common in the sandy dunes of that area as late as the 1920s. When non-native ivy, eucalyptus and ice plants took over their habitat, the bees disappeared.

“The discovery of a thriving native bee colony on the western side of the Presidio is the latest example of how the removal of invasive plants and the restoration of dunes and grasses at the former military base have helped bring back coastal habitat that thrived in San Francisco for tens of thousands of years before the city was built,” said Saul-Gershenz, who received her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis and is now associate director of research for the Wild Energy Initiative, John Muir Institute of the Environment, on campus.

“I am very happy to see this nest site at the Presidio,” she said. She's worked on the biology, chemical ecology and parasite interactions of this group of bees in the genus Habropoda for many years--on research trips that have taken her to the Oregon coast and the Mojave desert, among others.

“This nest parasite M. franciscanus was originally described from the dunes in San Francisco near Lake Merced by Van Dyke in 1928,” Saul-Gershenz said. “It is presumed to be locally extirpated in San Francisco due to habitat alteration. However its host bee, H. miserabilis  appears to have finally found a suitable nest location in a sand dune area being restored by the Presidio Trust in the Presidio National Park.  The resiliency of nature provides hope for the future.”

In a news story published in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 29, science reporter Peter Fimrite quoted the UC Davis entomologist as saying that the silver digger bees were “all but gone” by the mid-20th century.  However, Saul-Gershenz has kept looking for them. In fact, she collected one near Baker Beach in 1998.

With restoration, comes hope for the return of native plants and insects.

"Biologists have reported a more than tenfold increase in the number of native plants in the Presidio, including at least four that are federally listed endangered or threatened, among them the Presidio clarkia," wrote Fimrite. "The Franciscan manzanita, which was believed to be extinct in the wild, was discovered in the Presidio in 2009. It was the first of its kind seen in its native San Francisco since the old Laurel Hill Cemetery was bulldozed in 1947 and paved over for homes."

Brian Hildebidle, stewardship coordinator for the Presidio Trust, discovered the colonies while surveying a dune restoration project.  Jonathan Young, wildlife ecologist for the Presidio Trust, was also included in the news story.

Gershenz and collaborator Jocelyn Millar of UC Riverside and others deciphered the sex attraction of Habropoda miserabilis and the deceptive mimicking blend used by its nest parasite Meloe franciscanus working with a population on the coast of Oregon (Saul-Gershenz et al. 2018). They documented a new parasite-host location system while conducting research on related species in the same genus Habropoda pallida found in the Mojave and Sonoran Desert (Saul-Gershenz and Millar 2006).

The comeback of silver digger bees is not limited to San Francisco. Fimrite related that several other areas in California are are witnessing comebacks, including Bodega Marine Reserve in Bodega Bay and Lanphere Dunes in the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

We remember seeing volunteers at Dillon's Beach, Bodega Bay, last summer removing ice plants by the bird sanctuary, and in the process, giving native plants, native insects and related wildlife a chance to thrive. We remember beachcombers asking "Why? Why are they doing that? Those ice plants are so PRETTY."

The discovery at the Presidio is why.

As Saul-Gershenz points out, there are 1600 native bee species in California, but scientists know little about many of them.

They are all pollinators. And all life is connected.  As naturalist/environmental philosopher John Muir (1838-1914) wrote in My First Summer in the Sierra: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

So it is with the silver digger bees. That's why they're gold.