- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
In partnership with the UC Davis-based Western Institute for Food Safety and Security (WIFSS), UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and Oregon State University, the USDA's Specialty Crop Multi-State Program is funding the grant to support food safety and honey bee health through veterinary education. WIFSS is associated with the School of Veterinary Medicine and the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Joining Niño on the project are two School of Veterinary affiliates, project leader Bennie Osburn, former dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine, and collaborator Jonathan Dear, assistant professor of clinical medicine and epidemiology, Department of Medicine and Epidemiology; and state partner collaborator Ramesh Sagili, associate professor at Oregon State University.
“California regulations stipulate that veterinarians participate in continuing education that addresses antimicrobial stewardship,” commented Dear. “The Veterinary Feed Directive that's at the heart of the new interaction between veterinarians and beekeepers is all part of this renewed emphasis on stewardship.”
The nearly $500,000 grant is part of $7 million in funding announced April 30 to support 11 projects in six states to develop solutions to challenges affecting the specialty crop industries that cross state boundaries. The Specialty Crop Multi-State Program manages the grants, which are administered by the Agricultural Marketing Service.
“Honey bees play a dual role in the production of specialty crops,” Niño wrote in the abstract. “They produce honey, classified as a specialty crop, and they are the primary managed pollinators for a majority of high value specialty crops grown in the contiguous states of California and Oregon. Currently, annual colony losses are unacceptably high due to a variety of environmental and biological causes including bacterial diseases. Historically, beekeepers have self-prescribed antibiotics to control these diseases. However, the Food and Drug Administration and the State of California have taken steps to address antibiotic resistance and antimicrobial use in the feed or water of food-producing animals.
Osburn and Dear noted that “Currently, veterinary schools are lagging in adopting curricula focused on apiculture. This project will offer a comprehensive bee biology online course and train-the-trainer practical training for veterinarians and apiculture educators with the ultimate goal of supporting safety and security of specialty crops that depend on honey bees for production.”
The WIFSS mission “is to serve the global community by conducting research, developing training, and providing outreach programs that will enhance the health and security of people, animals, and the environment.”
In announcing the funding, USDA Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Greg Ibach said: “The best way to tackle many of the biggest challenges in food safety and to promote markets is to make it easier for a lot of stakeholders to work together. USDA's Specialty Crop Multi-State Program provides the grease to help them leverage state and private sector resources across state lines—especially the knowledge and experience of farmers and the agricultural industry.”
Ibach said SCMP strengthens food safety; seeks new ways to address plant pests, disease, and other crop-specific issues; and increases marketing opportunities for specialty crops—fruits, vegetables, tree nuts and dried fruits to horticulture and nursery crops, including floriculture. USDA competitively awards funds to state departments of agriculture that partner with stakeholder organizations in two or more states.
Among the other awards announced:
- The University of California and Oregon State University for a pest and plant health project to optimize phasmarhabditis nematodes for mitigating invasive gastropods in the western United States. Awarded $770,356.
- USDA's Agricultural Research Service, Washington State University and the University of California, Davis for a pest and plant health project to better understand esca trunk disease in multiple grape-production systems.Awarded $348,991.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The second annual California Honey Festival, sponsored by the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center and the City of Woodland, will offer scores of entertainment and educational activities and food and drink from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, May 5 in downtown Woodland. It's a free, family friendly event.
The festival was created in 2017 to cultivate an interest in beekeeping, and to educate the public in support of bees and their keepers, said Amina Harris, director of the Honey and Pollination Center. "Bees face many threats today—it is the goal of the festival to help attendees understand the importance of bees to food diversity in the United States. "
The California Honey Festival's mission is to promote honey, honey bees and their products, and beekeeping. Through lectures and demonstrations, the crowd can learn about bees and how to keep them healthy. Issues facing the bees include pests, pesticides, diseases, malnutrition, and climate changes.
One of the highlights: Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño, California's state apiculturist, and a member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty, will be "opening a bee hive to show attendees just how a bee hive works," said Harris. "The intriguing catch? The hive will be full of bees!"
At the festival, the crowd can also learn what to plant in their gardens to feed the bees and other pollinators. Honey bees pollinate one-third of the American diet. Proceeds garnered at the festival will benefit bee and pollinator non-profit organizations involved in research and education.
Restaurants will offer creative and tasty honey centric menus throughout the week, officials said. Bars will offer a selection of mixed drinks with mead or honey and local breweries will include honey beers on tap.
UC Davis Stage
The UC Davis Stage will be a beehive of activity. The schedule:
10:30 a.m.: Gene Brandi, past president of the American Beekeeping Federation, speaking on "Beekeeping and Honey Production in California"
11:15 a.m.: Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, live bee demonstration in the bee tent
11:45 a.m: James Sherman, chief operating officer of Pollinator.org, speaking on "Protecting Bees and All Pollinators at Home and on the Farm--What Can You Do?"
12:45 p.m.: Frank Golbeck, chief administrative officer of Golden Coast Mead
1 p.m.: Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, live bee demonstration in the bee tent
1:45 p.m. John Mola, winner of the 2018 Bee Symposium Graduate Student Poster Contest, speaking on"Where do Bees Go and How Do We Know?"
2:15 p..m.: World-class garden designer and author Kate Frey, speaking on "How to Design Bee-Friendly Gardens." She is the co-author the popular book, The Bee Friendly Garden, with Professor Gretchen LeBuhn of UC San Francisco
3:45 p.m.: Billy Synk, director of Pollination Programs, Project Apis M, speaking on "California Almonds an the Upper Midwest"
3:45 p.m.: Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, live bee demonstration in the bee tent
Other activities will include the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology's insect petting zoo and displays; educational displays spotlighting honey bees, honey, bee hives, bee health and the life cycle of honey bees; a 7-foot Honey Wheel and honey tastings; bee costumes for kids and adults, and information on the California Master Beekeeper Program, operated by Elina Lastro Niño of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, UC Davis.
Cooking Demonstrations
Honey? It's there in all the cooking demonstrations:
10:30 11:15:
Fire Brothers will prepare Smokey Chipotle Sauce a chicken street taco marinated with honey, served with a “honey slaw” and topped with Fire Brothers' Smoky Chipotle Sauce
11:30 to 12:15:
Mason Partak will prepare Honey Corn Bread Cobbler
12:30 1:15:
Mani Niall will prepare honey and mustard vinaigrette, a savory rosemary semolina scone and chocolate mead truffles
1:30 to 2:15
Cache Creek: dish pending
2:30 3:15
Santana Diaz will prepare UC Davis Honey-Strawberry and Spring Pepper Vinaigrette, and UC Davis Honey-Rosemary and Apricot Chicken
3:30 4:15
Father Paddy's will prepare Justin Severson appetizer: honey almond panco crusted prawns main dish: honey soy-glazed chicken breast both herb basmati rice and daily vegetables dessert: bacon vanilla ice cream honey sundae with butterscotch crack nut cookies cocktail: and honey bourbon smash.
Busy Bee Kids' Zone
The "Busy Bee Kids' Zone" is billed as fun and educational insights for all. The Woodland Library holds the first slot, 11 to 11:45; Uncle Jer from 12 to 12:45; Planet Bee from 1 to 1:45; Uncle Jer from 2 to 2:45; Dilly Dally from 3 to 3:45, and Planet Bee from 4 to 4:45.
Plaza Main Stage Music
Entertainers will perform throughout the day.
10 to 11: Gold Souls
The Gold Souls will offer driving grooves of funk, the rich textures of soul, and the compelling storytelling of the blues. Launched in early 2017, the band combines their many influences to create a unique sound. This effort came to fruition with the release and tour of their self-titled EP last May.
11:30 12:30: City of Trees Brass Band
Over the last three years, City of Trees Brass Band has canvased Sacramento and San Francisco in an effort to deliver the spirit of New Orleans to the West Coast. Compiling 1,200 hours of street performance, dozens of educational clinics, and many inspirational assemblies for K-12th graders, the Brass Band takes pride in its contribution to Sacramento-area culture. In the ultimate test of brass and brawn, the Trees took a two-week trip to New Orleans where they said, "we discovered our sound not only holds up to the standards of the Crescent City, it belongs there."
1 to 2: The Sam Chance and the Untraditional
The Sam Chase and The Untraditional is described as "blending rock n 'roll and folk music while maintaining the sensibilities and attitudes from growing up on a healthy diet of punk rock." This band has performed at festivals such as Outside Lands, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, High Sierra Music Festival, and Kate Wolf Music Festival.
2:30 3:30: Cameron Calloway
Named The “Soul Child” by COACHELLA Magazine, Black/Filipino rhythm and blues singer Cameron Calloway is described as "a man of soul based in the heart of Sin City." The soul singer performed at the 5th annual Life Is Beautiful Music Festival, sharing the bill with chart topping acts including Chance The Rapper, Lorde, Muse, Gorillaz, Blink 182. aHe has performed with the likes of Grammy-nominated r&b/hip-hop band The Internet; soul sensation Allen Stone; Emily King; Mayer Hawthorne; multi award winning group Dru Hill; Robert Randolph and The Family Band;and The Stone Foxes. He also sang at tje11th Annual Joshua Tree Music Festival. He recently released his debut EP “My Neighborhood,” available on Spotify and Apple Music.
4 to 5: Mojo Green
This is a 7-piece, female-fronted, horn-heavy funk from Reno. They pride themselves on high energy and being "one of the funkiest live shows around." They have performed at tje Mateel Music Fest, Hangtown Halloween, For The Funk Of It, Squaw Valley Funk Fest, The Bounce, Ridgestock, Burning Man, Guitarfish, Enchanted Forest Gathering, Off Beat Music Fest-, Spookadelic Halloween Funktacular, Nugget Rib Cook Off, Hard Rock Hotel And Casino Lake Tahoe's Grand Opening, Sandpoint Summerfest, Concerts At Commons Beach,and Live at Lake View Tahoe, among others.
Beer/Mead/Wine Garden
Mead and wineries featured are Strad in Sac, Honey Run, Gold Coast Mead, Nectar Creek, Crystal Basin Cellars and Running Rivers Wine Cellars
Breweries serving: Yolo Brewing, Lagunitas, Sudwerk and Blue Note.
Blue Note
Live Music in the Beer Garden
The schedule includes:
11:30:Jared Johnson
1: Boot Juice
2:30: Michael Ray
4: Elisa Sun
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Judges were Tom Seeley, professor at Cornell University, the symposium's keynote speaker; speaker Santiago Ramirez, assistant professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis, and native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor at UC Davis. Master beekeeper/journalist Mea McNeil of San Anselmo served as the timer and coordinator for the panel.
“In conservation biology and ecological study, we must know the distances organisms travel and the scales over which they go about their lives,” Mola said of his work. “To properly conserve species, we have to know how much land they need, how close those habitats need to be to each other, and the impact of travel on species success. For instance, if I'm told there's free burritos in the break room, I'm all over it. If the 'free' burritos require me traveling to Scotland, it's not worth it and I would spend more energy (and money) than I would gain. For pollinators, it's especially important we understand their movement since the distances they travel also dictates the quality of the pollination service they provide to crop and wild plants."
Second place of $600 went to Maureen Page, a second-year Ph.D. student in Neal Williams lab for her research, “Impacts of Honey Bee Abundance on the Pollination of Eschscholzia californica (California golden poppy).”
Page presented her research on the impacts of honey bee abundance on native plant pollination. “While honey bees are economically important, they are not native to North America and may have negative impacts on native bees and native plant communities in certain contexts,” she related. “My research is ongoing, but preliminary results suggest that honey bee abundance may negatively affect the pollination of California poppies.”
In her abstract, Page wrote: "Many studies support the claim that introduced honey bees compete with native pollinators. However, little is known about how honey bee introductions will affect native plant communities and plant species' persistence."
Page received her bachelor's degree in biology from Scripps College, Claremont, Calif. in 2006, cum laude. She seeks a career as a professor and principal investigator.
Two graduate students tied for fourth place and each received $250: doctoral student Jacob Francis of the University of Nevada, for his “A Sweet Solution to the Pollen Paradox: Nectar Mediates Bees' Responses to Defended Pollen” and Katie Uhl, a master's student, UC Davis Department of Food Science and Technology, for her “Determination of Volatile Organic Compounds in Mono-Floral Honey Using HS-SPME/GC/MS." Francis studies with major professor Anne Leonard of Ecology, Evoluiton and Conservation Biology. Uhl's major professor is Alyson Mitchell.
Also honored was Kimberly Chacon, a doctoral student in the UC Davis Geography Graduate Group who studies with Professor Steve Greco for her “A Landscape Ecology Approach to Bee Conservation and Habitat Design." She received $150.
The annual Bee Symposium, themed "Keeping Bees Healthy, " is sponsored by the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, headed by director Amina Harris, and the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, chaired by nematologist and professor Steve Nadler.
Harris and Professor Neal Williams of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, who serves as the center's faculty co-chair, emceed the symposium. The symposium drew a crowd of 250 from across the country.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
See full paper
DAVIS--Hear that honey bee buzzing toward a flower? It's not just the nectar that she's scented.
Nectar-living microbes release scents or volatile compounds, too, and can influence a pollinator's foraging preference, according to newly published research led by UC Davis community ecologist Rachel Vannette.
The groundbreaking research, published in the current edition of New Phytologist journal, shows that nectar-inhabiting species of bacteria and fungi “can influence pollinator preference through differential volatile production,” said Vannette, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
“This extends our understanding of how microbial species can differentially influence plant phenotype and species interactions through a previously overlooked mechanism,” Vannette said. “It's a novel mechanism by which the presence and species composition of the microbiome can influence pollination.”
“Broadly, our results imply that the microbiome can contribute to plant volatile phenotype,” she said. “This has implications for many plant-insect interactions.”
Their paper, titled “Nectar-inhabiting Microorganisms Influence Nectar Volatile Composition and Attractiveness to a Generalist Pollinator,” may explain in part the previous documented extreme variation floral volatiles that Robert Junker of University of Salzburg, Austria, and his team found; New Phytologist published their work in March 2017.
Although microbes commonly inhabit floral nectar, microbial species differ in volatile profiles, they found. “Honey bees detected most of the microbial volatiles or scents that we tested,” Vannette said, “and they distinguished the solutions of yeasts or bacteria based on volatiles only.” This suggests that pollinators could choose among flowers based on the microbes that inhabit those flowers.
The yeast Metschnikowia reukaufii produced the most distinctive compounds (some shared with the fruity flavors in wine) and was the most attractive of all microbes compared. This yeast is commonly found in flower nectar and is thought to hitch a ride on pollinators to travel from one flower to the next. Its scent production may help it attract pollinators, which then help the yeast disperse among flowers.
The Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, UC Davis, provided the honey bees. More than 20 species of flowers--mostly natives--were used in the survey, including canyon delphinium or canyon larkspur (Delphinium nudicaule), sticky monkey flower (Mimulus aurantiacus), salvia (Lepechinia calycina) and purple Chinese houses (Collinsia heterophylla). The samplings were done in the spring and early summer, when the natives are at their peak.
Co-authors of the paper are Caitlin Rering, postdoctoral fellow at USDA-ARS, Gainesville, Fla.; John Beck researcher at USDA-ARS; Griffin Hall, junior specialist in the Vannette lab; and Mitch McCartney in UC Davis Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
The USDA and USDA-ARS funded the research.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
President Eric Mussen, Extension apiculturist emeritus, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is serving his sixth term as president since its founding at UC Davis by faculty members Norm Gary and Mussen, along with then postdoctoral fellow Becky Westerdahl, now an Extension nematologist in the department.
The conference, to be held primarily in the UC Davis Activities and Recreation Center (ARC), kicks off with the three co-founders engaging in nostalgia. Many former WAS officers and founding members are expected to attend and participate in the lively session.
The conference is open to all interested persons; registration is now underway at http://www.westernapiculturalsociety.org/ The pre-registration deadline is July 31; the cost will advance after that.
“It's a good opportunity to learn about current scientific honey and native bee research, from the researchers themselves, on varying topics such as foraging behavior, parasites, predators, and diseases of bees,” Mussen said, “and to speak directly to the researchers concerning their research findings and any other bee-related topics.
Speakers will include:
- Bee Culture editor Kim Flottum of Ohio, who will discuss "The Rapidly Changing Bee Scene"
- Les Crowder of Texas, co-author of the book, Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for Honey Bee Health, who will focus on "Managing Honey Bee Colonies in Top-Bar Hives" with co-author Heather Harrell
- Larry Connor of Michigan, who will address more in-depth beekeeping fundamentals with his presentation “Keeping Your Bees Alive and Growing.”
- Sonoma County beekeeper Serge Labesque, who will discuss“natural seasonal growth and decline of a healthy honey bee colony population living in a hollow tree
Beekeepers and other participants will learn about pesticides, and styles of beekeeping from "leave alone," through "essential intervention," to "intensive intervention," Mussen said.
Also planned: tours of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility and the adjacent Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven at UC Davis; Mann Lake warehouse and products showroom in Woodland; and the Z Specialty Foods, Woodland.
Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, will lead a formal honey tasting.
More information is pendng.