March 27,2012
DAVIS--"The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plains,” according to the hit song in My Fair Lady.
Don’t tell that to Derek Downey, who has been trying to schedule the grand opening of the Davis Bee Sanctuary now for the past two weeks. It appears that rain is falling mainly on the Davis Bee Sanctuary.
A grand opening initially set March 21 and then changed to March 31 has now been re-scheduled for Sunday, April 1.
“It’s supposed to rain hard on Saturday, March 31, and be nice on Sunday, April 1,” said organizer Derek Downey, who heads the Davis Bee Collective and its newly landscaped site, the Davis Bee Sanctuary. He’s hoping it will “bee nice.”
The Davis Bee Collective, a community of small-scale beekeepers founded by a former UC Davis entomology graduate student Eli Sarnat, will host the grand opening of the sanctuary from 1 to 5 p.m., Sunday, April 1 on Orchard Park Drive, near The Domes student housing. The public is invited.
The open house will be an opportunity for area residents and prospective members to “come meet the beekeepers," Downey said. The event will include tours, honey tasting, a permaculture lesson covering hugelkultur (the drought-tolerant technique being used at the sanctuary), a free flower giveaway, seed exchange (bring seeds), and a presentation on native bees, which also will be sharing the sanctuary.
A special guest will be Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology.
As of March 29, six hives now occupy the Bee Sanctuary. "We have four empty hives and space for a total of 12," Downey said. The hives are decorated with such names as "Just Bee," "Bee Happy," "Birdhouse" and "the Whaler Superorganism."
"The bee sanctuary is also place for people to meditate, smell the flowers, watch the bees and hummingbirds in the trees, and learn about permaculture---we're using a drought-tolerant method of gardening called hugelkultur ("hoogle culture") which involves burying logs of different sizes under the soil," Downey said. "The wood breaks down and becomes a sponge able to hold on to a ton of water so that in summer months you don't need to irrigate very much, if at all!"
Sarnat established the Bee Collective in 2005. Downey, who received his bachelor's degree in engineering from UC Davis in 2009, joined the Bee Collective in 2005 and then founded a small beekeeping business, the Davis Bee Charmers in 2010 and the Davis Bee Sanctuary in 2011. As the founder of the Davis Bee Charmers, he catches swarms, relocates hives, and teaches beekeeping lessons to individuals and groups.
Downey invites interested persons to join the Bee Collective and Bee Sanctuary; information on how to join is on the Davis Wiki website at http://daviswiki.org/Davis_Bee_Collective. He moderates the Google group and adds new members. "If someone wants to just help out and learn about bees, they are always welcome to take part," he said. "We will have hives that are collectively managed so everyone can learn together. If someone wants to keep their own hive there, it is first-come, first served. We have space for 10 to 12 hives, max."
Members of the Bee Collective share resources, such as beekeeping equipment, books, and tools. Downey accepts donations for the Bee Collective and Bee Sanctuary (contact him at davisbeecharmers@gmail.com o r(310) 694-2405). He recently received dozens of donated perennials.
Bee Sanctuary work parties are held every Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. at the site. Downey anticipates filling the other empty hives in the sanctuary via swarms he collects in Davis, Dixon, Sacramento, Woodland, and Winters.
See related story and why Eli Sarnat founded the Bee Collective
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
March 27,2012
DAVIS--They know their insects.
The UC Davis Department of Entomology's Linnaean Team, comprised of four graduate students, won the championship at the Pacific Branch of the Entomological Society of America competition, held Monday night, March 26, in Portland, Ore. The team now heads to the Linnaean finals at ESA's 60th annual meeting, set for Nov. 11-14 in Knoxville, Tenn. The prize: $500 to help defray the costs.
The UC Davis team is comprised of Matan Shelomi, Kelly Hamby, Kelly Liebman, and Jenny Carlson, and is advised Extension entomology specialist Larry Godfrey of the Department of Entomology faculty.
Six teams—UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, University of Idaho, and two teams for Washington State—competed in the lively six-round event, held from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. The Linnaean Games are college bowl-style games based on entomological facts and insect trivia. Team members respond to the moderator's questions by buzzing in with the answers.
In the first round, UC Davis was pitted against one of the WSU teams. “The questions were very difficult compared to the two rounds that preceded us,” Shelomi said. “We tied 30/30, but we won the tiebreaker question. It was a picture question showing a map of Ball's Pyramid, Lord Howe Island, New Zealand, taken from a recent National Public Radio (NPR) article on an insect recently rediscovered there after having been thought to be extinct.”
The answer: Lord Howe Island Phasmid, Dryococelus australis, also known as a land lobster.
Shelomi, the team’s phasmid expert, said he "was very happy to see that picture and knew the answer before they asked the question. After that, we played the University of Idaho and won, then we had a showdown with UC Berkeley for the top two positions.” Both will represent the Pacific Branch in Knoxville.
It was a long night, the UC Davis team agreed. The UC Davis team played three out of the total of six games.
Hamby served as the agricultural entomology and integrated pest management (IPM) expert on the team; Liebman and Carlson, medical entomology; and Shelomi, insect physiology.
All four are studying for their doctorates. Hamby’s major professor is IPM specialist Frank Zalom; Liebman’s major professor, medical entomologist Tom Scott (she receives funds from a grant awarded to medical entomologist Greg Lanzaro, School of Veterinary Medicine); Shelomi’s major professor, Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology; and Jenny Carlson’s major professors are medical entomologists Anthony “Anton” Cornel and Gregory Lanzaro.
Some other questions asked:
Name four of the six orders of arthropods represented in the circus troupe from the movie "A Bug's Life." (Answers: Lepidoptera, Mantodea, Coleoptera, Phasmatodea, Isopoda, Aranaea.)
What are the two diseases caused by trypanosomes and vectored by insects, and where do they occur? (Answers: Chagas in South America, African Sleeping Sickness in sub-Saharan Africa.)
This is the second consecutive year that a UC Davis team has won the Pacific Branch competition. The 2011 team competing at the regionals was comprised of Shelomi; Meredith Cenzer, a graduate student in the Louie Yang lab; Emily Symes, graduate student in the Frank Zalom lab; and James Harwood, graduate student in the James Carey lab. At the national finals, Shelomi and Cenzer were joined by team members Andrew Merwin of the Michael Parrella lab, and Mohammad-Amir Aghaee of the Godfrey lab. UC Davis made it to the semifinals by defeating Iowa State. In the championship game, the University of Nebraska defeated North Carolina State University.
Each individual branch of the ESA may send its winning team and runner-up to compete in the nationals. Gold medals are awarded to the winning team, and silver medals to the runner-up team. In addition, each team receives a plaque for its department.
The Pacific Branch of the ESA includes the following states and provinces:
United States: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming.
U.S. Territories: American Samoa, the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Johnston Atoll, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Midway Islands, Wake Island.
Canada: Alberta, British Columbia, Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, Yukon.
Mexico: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sinaloa, Sonora.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
March 27, 2012
DAVIS--Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at UC Davis, is featured in today's edition of National Geographic for the giant "warrior wasp" she discovered in Indonesia.
The news article, titled "Bizarre 'King of Wasps' Found in Indonesia, talks about the warrior wasp she discovered on the Mekongga Mountains in southeastern Sulawesi.
Kimsey plans to name it Garuda, after the national symbol of Indonesia.
The male measures about two-and-a-half-inches long, Kimsey said. “Its jaws are so large that they wrap up either side of the head when closed. When the jaws are open they are actually longer than the male’s front legs. I don’t know how it can walk. The females are smaller but still larger than other members of their subfamily, Larrinae.”
The large jaws probably play a role in defense and reproduction, she said. "In another species in the genus the males hang out in the nest entrance. This serves to protect the nest from parasites and nest robbing, and for this he exacts payment from the female by mating with her every time she returns to the nest. So it's a way of guaranteeing paternity. Additionally, the jaws are big enough to wrap around the female;s thorax and hold her during mating."
See initial story that appeared on the UC Davis Department of Entomology website on Aug. 19, 2011.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
March 26, 2012
DAVIS--The UC Davis Department of Entomology has announced its list of speakers for the spring seminars.
Coordinators Louie Yang and Joanna Chiu, assistant professors, said the seminar series will take place on Wednesdays from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall. The series will begin April 4 and continue through May 23. In a webcast project coordinated by professor James R. Carey, the seminars will be videotaped and can be accessed at a later date on UCTV.
The first speaker is researcher Ian Pearse, who just finished his doctorate with major professor Rick Karban of UC Davis. His topic: "The Use of Non-Native Plants by Native Herbivores."
Pearse studies the ecology of plants and herbivores. He received his bachelor's degree at the University of Illinois, Urbana.
Abstract: As human-aided range expansions and climate change alter the distributions of both plants and their herbivores, novel interactions between organisms will become some of the most pressing issues that can be addressed by modern ecologists. It would be very useful to have a strong theoretical framework for predicting novel herbivore-plant interactions before they happen and to have a mechanistic understanding of why some interactions occur while others do not. I outline a theoretical framework for predicting plant-herbivore interactions, and I illustrate examples of plant traits and relationships that affect the colonization of non-native oak trees by herbivores. I show that, in the oak genus, phylogenetic relationships between plant species drive herbivore interactions, and that this trend is governed by subtle plant traits that are often overlooked as defenses.
The list of speakers
April 4: Ian Pearse, who just finished his doctorate, working with major professor Rick Karban lab, UC Davis, will speak on "The Use of Non-Native Plants by Native Herbivores."
Host: Rick Karban, professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology
April 11: James Harwood, graduate student, James R. Carey lab, UC Davis,"Biodemography of Reproductive Senescence in Fruit Flies (Tephritidae): The Influence of External Conditions on Age Specific Reproduction and Lifespan"
Host: James R. Carey, professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology
April 18: Bryony C. Bonning, professor, Iowa State University, "Novel Toxin Delivery Strategies for Management of Pestiferous Aphids"
Host: Bruce Hammock, distinguished professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology
April 25: Vince Jones, professor, Washington State University. "How a 'Perfect Storm' of Technology, Legislation, and Applied Ecology is Finally Leading to IPM in Western Orchards"
Host: Michael Parrella, professor and chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology
May 2: Susan Cobey, bee breeder-geneticist at UC Davis and Washington State University, "Importation of Honey Bee Germplasm to Increase Genetic Diversity in Domestic Breeding Stocks"
Host: Eric Mussen, Extension apiculturist, UC Davis Department of Entomology
May 9: Sonia Altizer, professor, University of Georgia, "Infection and Immunity in Migratory Species: Monarchs as a Global Case Study"
Host: Louie Yang, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology
May 16: James C. Nieh, professor of biology, University of California, San Diego, "Role of Negative Signaling in a Superorganism: the Honey Bee Stop Signal"
Host: Brian Johnson, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology
May 23: Tara Thiemann, postdoctoral Scholar at UC Davis, William Reisen lab, "Survey of Culex Bloodfeeding Patterns in California"
Host: William Reisen, research entomologist, Center for Vectorborne Diseases, and adjunct professor, Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology (PMI), School of Veterinary Medicine
Contact information:
Louie Yang: (530) 754-3261 or lhyang@ucdavis.edu
Joanna Chiu: (530) 752-1839 or jcchiu@ucdavis.edu
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
March 20, 2012
(Editor's Note: Due to heavy-rain forecast, this event has now been set for Sunday, April 1. See below).
DAVIS-- The Davis Bee Sanctuary is the Place to "Bee" on Sunday, April 1.
That's when the Davis Bee Collective, a community of small-scale beekeepers founded by a former UC Davis entomology graduate student, will host the grand opening of their newly landscaped apiary, the Davis Bee Sanctuary.
The event, open to the public, is scheduled from 1 to 5 p.m. at the site on Orchard Park Drive, Davis. The main ceremony starts at 1 p.m. However, visitors will be filtering in and out from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., said Derek Downey, a seven-year beekeeper who coordinates the Davis Bee Collective and the Davis Bee Sanctuary.
The Davis Bee Sanctuary is adjacent to the western edge of The Domes, a cooperative student housing community known for its dome-shaped structures.
The open house will be an opportunity for area residents and prospective members to “come meet the beekeepers," Downey said. The event will include tours, honey tasting, a permaculture lesson covering hugelkultur (the drought-tolerant technique being used at the sanctuary), a free flower giveaway, seed exchange (bring seeds), and a presentation on native bees, which also will be sharing the sanctuary.
A special guest will be Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology.
As of March 29, six hives now occupy the Bee Sanctuary. "We have four empty hives and space for a total of 12," Downey said. The hives are decorated with such names as "Just Bee," "Bee Happy," "Birdhouse," "the Whaler Superorganism."
"The bee sanctuary is also place for people to meditate, smell the flowers, watch the bees and hummingbirds in the trees, and learn about permaculture---we're using a drought-tolerant method of gardening called hugelkultur ("hoogle culture") which involves burying logs of different sizes under the soil," Downey said. "The wood breaks down and becomes a sponge able to hold on to a ton of water so that in summer months you don't need to irrigate very much, if at all!"
Ant specialist Eli Sarnat, who received his doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 2009, working with major professor Phil Ward, founded the Davis Bee Collective in 2005. Now residing in Happy Camp, Siskiyou County, Sarnat is a postdoctoral researcher based at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and an Encyclopedia of Life Rubenstein Fellow. Sarnat and a beekeeping partner maintain about 20 hives in Happy Camp.
Sarnat said he “established the Bee Collective to get other folks in the community interested in keeping bees, and to share the costs and labor involved with things like honey harvesting, equipment sharing, and equipment building. By working in collaboration, it became a lot easier for all of us to rent a honey extractors and share in the labor--and fun!--of spinning honey. Instead of putting a lot of energy in setting up equipment and tools to build just one hive for myself, we joined together to build 20 hives for all of us. And instead of each of us needing our own wax melter, we made a few of them, and whoever needs to melt combs can borrow one for the day or week.”
His friend, Derek Downey, who received his bachelor's degree in engineering from UC Davis in 2009, joined the Bee Collective in 2005. In 2010, Downey founded a small beekeeping business, the Davis Bee Charmers; he catches swarms, relocates hives, and teaches beekeeping lessons to individuals and groups. Then in 2011, Downey founded The Bee Sanctuary as the place to keep the bees.
Downey invites interested persons to join the Bee Collective and Bee Sanctuary; information on how to join is on the Davis Wiki website at http://daviswiki.org/Davis_Bee_Collective. Downey moderates the Google group and adds new members. "If someone wants to just help out and learn about bees, they are always welcome to take part," he said. "We will have hives that are collectively managed so everyone can learn together. If someone wants to keep their own hive there, it is first-come, first served. We have space for 10 to 12 hives, max."
Members of the Bee Collective share resources, such as beekeeping equipment, books, and tools. Downey accepts donations for the Bee Collective and Bee Sanctuary (contact him at davisbeecharmers@gmail.com o r(310) 694-2405). He recently received dozens of donated perennials.
Bee Sanctuary work parties are held every Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. at the site. Among those participating are Melanie Lataste and her husband, Pierre Arrial of Nantes, France. Arrial is a postdoctoral scholar in the UC Davis Department of Geology.
One of the hives at the sanctuary is actually a birdhouse, or what Mussen calls "a birdhouse for wood ducks." Davis homeowners "installed it to invite birds to live in it," Downey said, but a swarm of honey bees soon claimed it. So, Downey moved the birdhouse--bees and all--into the sanctuary.
On Tuesday, March 20, the bees in the birdhouse swarmed, as expected. They're now established in a previously unoccupied hive in the sanctuary. Two other swarms from the same birdhouse were also collected and now occupy hives in the sanctuary.
Downey anticipates filling the other empty hives in the sanctuary via swarms he collects in Davis, Dixon, Sacramento, Woodland, and Winters.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894