- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"I think, all in all, the festival was a success despite the weather which is out of our control, especially when the forecasts were off by so much," said vendor coordinator/events specialist Jordan Waldron. "I heard no complaints from attendees; I even saw some just enjoying the rain."
Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center and a co-founder of the festival agreed with the crowd estimate. "They braved the rain, thunder, lightning and hail!"
The California Honey Festival, launched in 2017 to celebrate the importance of bees and to promote honey and honey bees and their products, last year drew a crowd of 40,000.
"Overall, great job by all this year," Waldron reiterated, in thanking Harris and GATEways Horticulturist Rachel Davis of the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden in coordinating the UC Davis Speakers' Stage. Harris also staffed a educational booth offering honey tasting. The Arboretum also provided one of the scores of booths that lined the streets.
The UC Davis-based California Master Beekeeper Program (CAMBP), founded in 2016 by Extension apiculturist Elina Niño of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, participated en force, staffing an information booth and an arts and crafts table. CAMPB, focused on learning, teaching, research, and public service, offers comprehensive, science-based information about honey bees and honey bee health.
A special guest was National Honey Bee Queen Selena Rampolla of Tampa, Fla., who is also a beekeeper. Crowned the honey bee queen at the American Beekeeping Federation Conference and Tradeshow earlier this year, she received a bachelor's degree in psychology, summa cum laude, from the University of South Florida in 2022. Rampolla, who developed her interest in honey bees in high school--and a subsequent beekeeping course convinced her to pursue the hobby--marvels at the "amazing symbiotic relationship between the honeybee, a flower, and society."
Another highlight of the festival: The UC Davis Speakers' Stage. Speakers addressed the crowds from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.:
- Pollination ecologist and professor Neal Williams, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, discussing "Pollination, the Importance of Native Bees and How to Promote Them"
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Kitty Bolte, GATEways horticulturist, UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, "Planting Your Garden to be a Welcoming Space for Pollinators"
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Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, and co-owner of Z Food Specialty and The HIVE, Woodland, "Let's Learn to Taste Honey."
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Wendy Mather, co-program manager of the California Master Beekeeper Program (CAMPB), "So, You Want to Be a Beekeeper?"
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Jean-Philippe Marelli, senior director of Integrated Pest Management for Mars Wrigley Confectionery (also a journey level master beekeeper and Melipona beekeeper in Brazil), "Stingless Bees: The Amazing World of Melipona Bees"
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Cooperative Extension apiculturist/associate professor Elina Lastro Niño of Entomology and Nematology, and director of the California Master Beekeeper Program (CAMPB), "What Our Bee Research Is Teaching Us."
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Sanmu "Samtso" Caoji, a 2022-23 Hubert Humphrey fellow, and founder of the Shangri-la Gyalthang Academy, and CEO of the Cultural Information Consulting Company, "Empowering Women to Become Beekeepers and Bread Winners for Their Families While Keeping Bees in the Wild"
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Rachel Davis, coordinator of Bee City USA Woodland and chair of Bee Campus USA UC Davis (GATEways Horticulturist for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden), "Woodland Is a Bee City; UC Davis Is a Bee City--What This Means to Our Communities"
The 2024 California Honey Festival is set for May 4.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The event, launched in 2017 to celebrate the importance of bees and to promote honey and honey bees and their products, last year drew a crowd of 40,000. It's free and family friendly.
Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, Robert Mondavi Institute, and a co-founder of the festival, announced the list of speakers who will deliver 20-minute talks on the Speakers' Stage, located just west of First Street.
10:30 a.m.: Pollination ecologist and professor Neal Williams, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, who will discuss "Pollination, the Importance of Native Bees and How to Promote Them"
11 a.m.: Kitty Bolte, GATEways horticulturist, UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, "Planting Your Garden to be a Welcoming Space for Pollinators"
12 noon: Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, and co-owner of Z Food Specialty and The HIVE, Woodland, "Let's Learn to Taste Honey."
1 p.m.: Wendy Mather, co-program manager of the California Master Beekeeper Program (CAMPB), "So, You Want to Be a Beekeeper?"
1:30 p.m.: Jean-Philippe Marelli, senior director of Integrated Pest Management for Mars Wrigley Confectionery (also a journey level master beekeeper and Melipona beekeeper in Brazil), "Stingless Bees: The Amazing World of Melipona Bees"
2 p.m.: Cooperative Extension apiculturist/associate professor Elina Lastro Niño of Entomology and Nematology, and director of the California Master Beekeeper Program (CAMPB), "What Our Bee Research Is Teaching Us."
2:30 p.m.: Sanmu "Samtso" Caoji, a 2022-23 Hubert Humphrey fellow, and founder of the Shangri-la Gyalthang Academy, and CEO of the Cultural Information Consulting Company, "Empowering Women to Become Beekeepers and Bread Winners for Their Families While Keeping Bees in the Wild"
3 p.m.: Rachel Davis, coordinator of Bee City USA Woodland and chair of Bee Campus USA UC Davis (GATEways Horticulturist for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden), "Woodland Is a Bee City; UC Davis Is a Bee City--What This Means to Our Communities"
UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology communications specialist Kathy Keatley Garvey will provide a background slide show of honey bees and native bees.
The event is both educational and entertaining. Attendees can taste honey, check out the bee observation hives, watch cooking demonstrations and kids' shows, taste mead and other alcoholic drinks (if of age) and learn about bees from beekeepers and bee scientists. Vendors, offering various products and food, will line the streets.
The UC Davis-based California Master Beekeeper Program, founded in 2016 by Niño, provides a program of learning, teaching, research, and public service. They offer comprehensive, science-based information about honey bees and honey bee health. Since 2016, the organization has donated 32,000 hours of volunteer time and served 186,630 individuals in education, outreach and beekeeping mentorship. Read more about their classes and their work on their website.
An after-party will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. at The HIVE Tasting Room and Kitchen, 1221 Harter Ave., Woodland. It will feature pollinator-inspired food, drinks, and dancing to the music of Joy and Madness, an 8-piece soul and funk group. Tickets are $20 and will benefit the California Master Beekeeper Program. "Each ticket includes entry to win a bountiful Yolo County food and drink basket (value $500)," Harris said. More information is on this website.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The 20,000-square-foot facility, which houses the Moon Shine Trading Company, Island of the Moon Apiaries, and The Hive, includes a processing plant, a tasting room (honey and mead), a gift shop, an outdoor courtyard and a pollinator garden.
Amina Harris, executive director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, is the self-described "queen bee" of the family-owned business. Her son, Josh Zeldner, is the nectar director, and Liz Luu, formerly of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, is the marketing manager and tasting room manager.
The Bohart Museum of Entomology will display bee specimens, and Kathy Keatley Garvey of the Department of Entomology and Nematology will showcase 24 images of honey bees--most taken in her family's pollinator garden.
Nature Day is a family event. It will include games, an observation hive, a scavenger hunt and more.
Here's what's planned:
Don't Toss Those Scraps! – Natural Dye Workshop
Time: All day
Learn how to utilize food scraps and create one-of-a-kind dyes for clothing, fabric and yarn. You'll be provided white cloth, avocado pits and black beans. What's with food waste? Each year Americans waste 108 billion pounds of food, contributing to extensive environmental, economic, and societal impacts.
Miridae Living Labs
Time: All day
You'll get to play with seed bombs, bugs, and plants with Miridae Living Labs! This is a non-profit, Sacramento-area organization dedicated to using native insects and plants as tools for education, research, and community engagement. The business "strives to generate positive ecological changes in our communities under the guidance and leadership of community members," a spokesperson said.
Miridae Mobile Nursery
Noon: Container Gardening with California Native Plants (first-come, first-serve basis with purchase of plant)
Miridae Mobile Nursery is a customized box truck that transforms into a curbside native plant shop. Its goal is "to bring people together through plants and gardening." All profits from its sales of native plants support its science education, non-profit Miridae Living Labs.
The Hive Nature Loop Scavenger Hunt
Time: All Day
Grab a pamphlet and go on a scavenger hunt for plants in The Hive Nature Loop. Find all the plants and show to a team member to win a prize.
Pollinator Garden Tour
Time: 1 p.m.
Join plant curator Rowan Boswell for a tour of the two-acre pollinator gardens at The Hive. It's billed as: "Get inspired by our oasis and outdoor courtyard, designed to meet the needs of our community and native species. Discover pollinator favorites, California natives, and drought-tolerant plants."
Bohart Museum of Entomology
The Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis will display specimens of bees. The insect museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology, is the home of a global collection of eight million insect specimens; a live "petting zoo" (Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas); and a gift shop.
Photography
Some 24 images of honey bees by award-winning photographer Kathy Keatley Garvey of UC Davis will be showcased. She writes a daily (Monday-Friday) Bug Squad blog on the UC ANR website.
The Hive Facility Tour
Times: 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Visitors are invited to tour the four-year development, created to educate the public on honey, bees, and pollination. Nectar director Josh Zeldner will guide the tours of 20,000-square-foot, Zero Net Energy facility.
Z Specialty Food began as the Moon Shine Trading Company, founded in 1979 by Ishai Zeldner (1947-2018), who died at age 71. He worked as a commercial beekeeper and studied beekeeping at UC Davis. He became fond of yellow starthistle honey. "He loved it so much that he began giving it away to his friends, and quickly realized he was going broke doing so," Harris remembers. His business grew to become Z Specialty Food.
It was his lifelong dream to open "The Hive."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center at the Robert Mondavi Institute is gearing up for two virtual events, one in September and the other in October:
- "Sips and Bites: The Hidden World of Honey" from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 9 on Zoom.
- Honey Sensory Workshop from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.on Thursday, Oct. 22.
Honey Sensory Workshop
Amina Harris, director of the Honey and Pollination Center, said the Honey Sensory Workshop is a "one-day immersion into the complex world of honey. Each student will be guided through tastings and discussions laying the groundwork to understand the variety and nuance of honey." Master presenters are master taster and Italian Certified Expert Honey Taster, Orietta Gianjorio and Amina Harris, educator and founding director and the co-owner of Z Specialty Food, LLC, Woodland.
The course will cover all the basics through lectures and tastings including:
- Sensory evaluation and descriptive analysis
- Mono-varietal honeys
- Crystallization
- Defects
Registration closes Oct. 1. The cost is $160. More information is here.
Sips and Bites: The Hidden World of Honey
This event is part of the Sips and Bites series, "which explores the stories behind foods and drinks with winemakers, brewers, and culinary innovators with tastings and conversations about what inspires them to make their wines, beers, and foods," said Harris, who will serve as moderator. Registration is underway.
Trevor and Claire Tauzer, founders of Sola Bee Farms, Woodland, will discuss how sustainable beekeeping is key to the future of agriculture. They will elaborate on what goes into making honey from a single floral source and yield information about the taste.
Trevor Tauzer, beekeeper and general manager of Tauzer Apiaries/Sola Bee Farms, created Sola Bee Farms in 2011 to sell the family's varietal honey directly to customers. He grew up beekeeping with his father, and following his graduation from UC Santa Cruz, returned to beekeeping in 2008. Trevor says he enjoys running his second-generation family business with his wife Claire, and teaching their 3.5 year old and 1-year-old about honey bees.
Claire Tauzer is the community outreach and brand manager of Tauzer Apiaries/Sola Bee Farms. A former high school teacher, she applies her educational background to help communicate and promote the importance of professional pollination and the benefits of local varietal honey. Sola Bee Farm's Wild Blackberry honey won a Good Food Award in 2019.
Registrants are asked to order a special three-pack of Sola Bee Farms honey (cost is $30) by Wednesday, Sept. 2 to ensure arrival by Wednesday, Sept. 9. (See more information)
The Honey and Pollination Center's recently scheduled Mead Making 301 course, initially set Sept. 14-17, has been canceled.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The conference, “Multidimensional Solutions to Current and Future Threats to Pollinator Health,” took place in the ARC Ballroom and covered a wide range of topics in pollinator research: from genomics to ecology and their application to land use and management; to breeding of managed bees; and to monitoring of global pollinator populations, according to the co-chairs, pollination ecologist and professor Neal Williams and Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. The UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, directed by Amina Harris, coordinated the conference, with events manager Elizabeth Luu praised as "the heavy hitter." (See agenda.)
"This was the fourth International Conference on Pollinator Biology, Health and Policy," Williams said. "Each time we try to add new elements that address emerging challenges and new directions in research. This year's sessions felt as fresh and innovative as ever, adding symposia on climate change, innovative monitoring and data collection, and urban bees. By restricting presenters to those who had not presented in the past six years we also added new voices and perspectives."
"We also grew," Williams said "In the past the conference has been just under 200 attendees. This year it topped 250, and we had to turn away several people because we simply could not fit more into the space. We added a second evening of posters to provide more time to interact. The response was overwhelming with 112 poster presenters!"
"We also added more explicit policy elements by creating a set of ViewPOINTS documents summarizing key areas in pollinator biology and heath that target policy makers. This has allowed for collaborative interaction across the attendees and a set of deliverable products from our interactions."
"It was an amazing team effort pulling it all together," Williams said. "Liz Luu from the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center was in a word, fantastic, keeping every thing and everyone together. The HPC really showed what it can do and what tremendous value it adds to our campus. The organizing committee worked so well together, sharing the load throughout. A great set of colleagues!"
Keynote speakers were Lynn Dicks, Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Research Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, England, and Christina Grozinger, distinguished professor of entomology and director of the Center for Pollinator Research, Pennsylvania State University.
Dicks keynoted the conference on Thursday, July 18, discussing "The Importance of People in Pollinator Conservation." Grozinger delivered the keynote address, "Bee Nutritional Ecology: From Genes to Landscapes" on Friday, July 19.
Elina Lastro Niño delivered a presentation on the California Master Beekeeper Program, which she founded and directs. UC Davis community ecologist Rachel Vannette, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, presented a talk on her hummingbird research.
Two receptions took place at the Honey and Pollination Conference on Old Davis Road: the opening night reception on Wednesday, July 17 and a honey-tasting and dinner reception on Thursday, July 18.
The next International Pollinator Conference will take place at Pennsylvania State University. Grozinger and Rufus Isaacs of Michigan State University launched the conference in 2012. They are held every third year.
An image of the late Robbin Thorp (1933-2019), UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology and a global authority on bees, held a prominent place at the conference. He assisted many scientists who have attended the conferences.