Internationally acclaimed honey bee geneticist Robert E. Page Jr., a UC Davis alumnus and an emeritus administrator at UC Davis and Arizona State University, has launched a YouTube Channel to  spotlight "the fascinating world of bees."

The link: https://youtube.com/@artofthebee

"The impact of bees on our planet is immeasurable," he says. "Bees are responsible for the evolution of the vast array of brightly-coloured flowers and for engineering the niches of multitudes of plants, animals, and microbes.  They've painted our landscapes with flowers through their pollination activities and have evolved the most complex societies to build and exploit the environment.  The biology of the honey bee is one that reflects their role in transforming environments with their anatomical adaptations and a complex language that together function to harvest floral resources.  A social system that includes a division of labor builds, defends, and provisions nests containing tens of thousands of individuals, only one of whom reproduces."

"This YouTube channel series presents fundamental biology, not in organizational layers, but wrapped around interesting themes and concepts, and in ways designed to explore and understand each concept," explained Page, who retired in 2019. "It examines the co-evolution of bees and flowering plants, bees as engineers of the environment, the evolution of sociality, the honey bee as a superorganism and how it evolves, and the mating behavior of the queen."

The content is derived from his book, The Art of the Bee: Shaping the Environment from Landscapes to Societies, (Oxford University Press, 2020).

His YouTube channel is divided into six segments:

Landscape Artists:
Episode 1: “Darwin's Abominable Mystery” 
Episode 2: “Floral Adaptations”
Episode 3: “Adaptations of Bees” 
Episode 4: “Dance Language”
Episode 5: “Navigation”
Episode 6: “Time Scales of Change” 

Environmental Engineers:
Episode 1: “Environmental Engineering”
Episode 2: “Niche Construction”
Episode 3: “Nest Defense in Niche Construction” 

The Social Contract:
Episode 1: “Political Philosophy of Bees Social Contract”
Episode 2: “Complex Social Structures”
Episode 3: “Power and Will of Social Insects”
Episode 4: “Evolution of Altruism in Bees”
Episode 5: “Public Health and Bees”
Episode 6: “Honey Bee Public Works, Welfare Immigration” 

Superorganisms:
Episode 1: “What Is a Superorganism?”
Episode 2: “Reproduction, Protection and Nutrition”
Episode 3: “Biogenic Law and Baers Law”
Episode 4: “Germ Plasm Theory”
Episode 5: “A Metaphor or an Entity” 

How to Make a Superorganism:
Episode 1: “The Spirit of the Hive”
Episode 2: “Division of Labor”
Episode 3: “Colony Level Selection”
Episode 4: “Phenotypic Architecture”
Episode 5: “Phenotypic and Genetic Architectures”
Episode 6: “Bee Development” 

Song of the Queen:
Episode 1: “Natural History and Castes”
Episode 2: “The Song Begins: Making a New Queen”
Episode 3: “Conditions that Stimulate Queen Rearing”
Episode 4: “Where Do Queens Mate?”
Episode 5: “How Do Queens Mate? How Many Times?”
Episode 6: “Polyandry and Sperm Use”

A native of Bakersfield, Rob holds a bachelor's degree in entomology (1976), with a minor in chemistry, from San Jose State University. He obtained his doctorate in entomology (1980) from UC Davis; joined the UC Davis faculty in 1989; and chaired the Department of Entomology from 1999 to 2004. 

Page joined Arizona State University in 2004, after retiring as Professor Emeritus and Chair Emeritus, UC Davis Department of Entomology, to be founding director of the School of Life Sciences. He served as provost of Arizona State University (2013- 2015) and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2011-2013). His research on honey bee behavior and genetics appears in his publications Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding (1997, with Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. , his major professor at UC Davis and "the father of honey bee genetics"); The Spirit of the Hive, Harvard University Press (2013); and The Art of the Bee, Oxford University Press (2020). His 230-plus research papers have been cited more than 20,000 times.

Much of his research occurred at UC Davis. For 24 years, from 1989 to 2015, Page maintained a honey bee-breeding program, managed by bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk. Their contributions include discovering a link between social behavior and maternal traits in bees. Their work was featured in a cover story in the journal Nature. In all, Nature featured his work on four covers from work mostly done at UC Davis.

Highly honored by his peers, the honey bee geneticist is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Brazilian Academy of Science, Leopoldina--the German National Academy of Science, and the California Academy of Sciences. His many awards include the Humboldt Research Prize, Fellow (elected) of the Entomological Society of America (ESA), and recipient of the both the Eastern and Western Apicultural Society Research Awards.

Page's UC Davis honors include:

• Thomas and Nina Leigh Distinguished Alumni Award (2018) from UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
• UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Professor (2019), one awarded annually, UC Davis Emeriti Association
• Exceptional Emeriti Faculty Award (2022), UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

He most recently won the 2023 C. W. Woodworth Award, the highest honor that the Pacific Branch of ESA offers. “Dr. Page is a pioneering researcher in the field of evolutionary genetics and social behavior of honey bees, and a highly respected and quoted author, teacher and former administrator,” wrote nominator Steve Nadler, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. Page is the 12th UC Davis recipient of the award, first presented in 1969. Laidlaw won the award in 1981. (See news story)

UC Davis alumna Shirley Gee, a retired research toxicologist and a former longtime manager of the Bruce Hammock lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, has been named one of the nation's best chemists by research.com, a leading academic platform for researchers.

Research.com just released its 2023 rankings, based on a researcher's D-index (Discipline H-index) metric, which includes only papers and citation values for an examined discipline. For chemistry, the organization singled out leading scientists with a D-index of at least 40 for academic publications.

Gee achieved a D-index of 56, 8,287 citations, and 202 publications.

“We already knew she's one of the nation's best chemists; we're so proud of her,” said Hammock, a UC Davis distinguished professor who holds a joint appointment with the Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Her statistics are “better than most of the chemists in the UC Davis Department of Chemistry,” Hammock added. 

“This is a pleasant surprise and I am honored,” Gee said. “But, it would not have been possible without Bruce's mentorship and all the hard work of the many graduate students and postdocs that have come through our lab.  Their eagerness and creativity and the ready availability of both lab and campus wide collaborators, as well as the multidisciplinary nature of the lab let them bring many new ideas to fruition. So my deepest gratitude goes to all of them.  I just tagged along for the ride!”

“Shirley is a UC Davis product who received her master's degree in environmental toxicology at UC Davis,” Hammock said. “In addition to managing a large laboratory at UC Davis, Shirley became the focal point for the development of immunochemical reagents for the analysis of environmental contaminants and human exposure.  Her work involved application of the 1972 Nobel Prize winning discovery of immunoassay by Rosalyn Yallow to human and environmental health.  Not only was Shirley a leader in the field scientifically, she hosted multiple international meetings commonly with published proceedings that led the development of the field.” 

“In addition to her scientific leadership Shirley became the personal focus of the field with her personal encouragement and attachment for scientists internationally,” Hammock related. “She made Davis the place to come to get the latest in technology and made international introductions and fostered collaborations that continue to be productive today.” 

The UC Davis toxicologist was among the first staff research associates at UC Davis to be given principal investigator status on grants. "On her own, she developed a computer-based chemical and equipment inventory system in the laboratory which could be used throughout the university," Hammock said.  

Gee's work has been recognized repeatedly with achievement awards and publications in peer-reviewed journals. Her area of expertise is the development of "ELISA" (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays) for pesticides and other environmental pollutants and their metabolites. She has trained students from around the world.

Gee was a toxicologist at SRI International in Menlo Park for three years before joining the Hammock lab in 1985. In the Hammock lab, she managed a team of researchers for more than three decades that annually included some 40 scientists: graduate students, technicians, post graduates and visiting professors from all over the world.  From 2007 to 2016, she served as the director of research and founding member/manager of Synthia LLC, Davis.

A longtime member of the Society of Toxicology and American Chemical Society, Gee holds two UC Davis degrees: a bachelor of science in biological sciences (1973) and a master's in pharmacology and toxicology (1981).

“I have long been interested in human and environmental exposure to toxicants and utilizing screening methods to evaluate the presence of the toxicant as well as the potential for effects,” Gee writes in her biosketch. “Immunoassays have been used clinically for more than 50 years to detect the presence of drugs, hormones and microorganisms for human medical diagnostics.”

Hammock, a pioneer in the field that applies immunoassay and biosensor technology to environmental toxicants, noted that “Shirley led a project that extended the technology to measurement of a variety of environmental toxicants including pesticides, industrial byproducts, bioterror agents and flame retardants.  It also included the application of new concepts to improve the robustness, sensitivity and high throughput that is required for environmental analysis and for the analysis of low-level exposure to toxicants in humans and animals in large scale studies.”

Gee has collaborated with investigators from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Uruguay, Mexico, and Sweden using the assays for dioxins. She participated in a farmworker exposure study on the herbicide paraquat in Costa Rica and a farmer/consumer study in Thailand on exposure to pyrethroid insecticides. She is also noted for exploring novel immunoassay technologies, such as the use of nanobodies and to transfer this technology to end users throughout the world.

Four-Fold Contributions
Her major contributions to science are four-fold:

1. Her dissertation work focused on the comparative metabolism of xenobiotics in vivo and in vitro. She worked with a variety of organisms including rats, mice, monkeys, insects, and marine invertebrates. This provided a foundation for later work on the development of novel primary hepatocyte cell cultures as high throughput screening methods to assess xenobiotic toxicity and to explore mechanism of toxicity. Her colorimetric assay for monitoring cytochrome P450 assays is the basis of assays used now to monitor these enzymes in projects ranging from drug metabolism to environmental health.

2. Working with Hammock who pioneered the development of immunoassays for pesticides, Gee developed the first immunoassays for pesticides found as ground and surface waters contaminants by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. Some of these assays were transferred to their analytical laboratory where in the early 1980s they helped end fish kills and drinking water contamination from rice herbicides. Shortly thereafter she co-authored a user's manual on assay development and use as a cooperative project with the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The basic assay development and validation continues today and has found application to many environmental contaminants and includes the development of commercially available test kits.

 3. Her interest in metabolism led her back to extending assay development from parent compounds to their metabolites. “Metabolites excreted in urine are useful biomarkers of exposure and the immunoassays developed have been used in several exposure studies,” Gee explained.  “The studies have provided guidance to help reduce pesticide exposure by examining pesticide exposure patterns based on urine tests, then relaying educational information to the population.”

4. Since 1975 the gold standard of antibody reagents has been monoclonal antibodies. Touted as a better defined and continuously available reagent for immunoassays, monoclonal antibodies have applications both in analytical chemistry, including such things as home pregnancy kits and therapeutics where many new drugs are monoclonal antibodies. However, they are limited because their size does not allow penetration of the cell membrane and ‘humanizing' them for therapeutics is difficult. At 1/10th the size, single domain antibodies derived from camelids (VHH) will penetrate cell membranes, are easy to clone, express and genetically modify. Leading a team of researchers Gee explored the utility of these novel antibodies for the detection environmental contaminants and other small molecules.  

In 2011, Gee received the UC Davis Staff Assembly's Citation for Excellence, presented by the chancellor.  “Shirley seeks ways to help the lab and the department be successful,” the nominators wrote. “She is extremely efficient and effective” and a “can-do person skilled at anticipating and solving problems in a friendly, courteous and timely manner.” 

UC Davis faculty are among those scheduled to speak when the annual California Honey Festival takes place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, May 6 in downtown Woodland.

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.

The late UC Berkeley professor John Edward Casida (1929-2018), internationally recognized for his work on pesticides and their effects on humans, “was the pesticide toxicologist of his generation, based on his research, his leadership and the impact of the many alumni from his laboratory. With pesticide toxicology as his base, his insight and brilliance illuminated multiple adjunct fields and inspired generations of scientists.”

So wrote two Casida lab alumni, UC Davis distinguished professor Bruce Hammock and Qing X. Li, a professor at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, in their recently published biographical memoir in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

Casida, a UC Berkeley professor of toxicology and nutritional science for 50 years, also taught environmental science, policy and management, before becoming an emeritus professor in 2014. However, he continued to do research and mentor students until his death at age 88. He was actively involved with the UC system and often served on exam committees at UC Davis.

Casida was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 1991 and to the London- based Royal Society in 1998. He won the first International Award for Research in Pesticide Chemistry in 1971 and the 1978 Spencer Award for Research in Agricultural and Food Chemistry by the American Chemical Society.  In 1993, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture "for his pioneering studies on the mode of action of insecticides, design of safer pesticides and contributions to the understanding of nerve and muscle function in insects.”

Hammock, who holds a joint appointment with the Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, studied in the Casida lab for four years. Hammock received his doctorate in entomology/toxicology from UC Berkeley in 1973 and also served as a postdoctoral researcher there. Li, who holds a doctorate (1990) from UC Davis, studying with Hammock and James Seiber, completed his postdoctoral training under the guidance of Casida before accepting a position at the University of Hawaii in 1995. 

“John's legacy is his science, and this knowledge fostered subsequent science,” wrote Hammock and Li, longtime collaborators and friends of Casida. “A second legacy is the scientists he mentored in his career and the next generation who grew up with tales of ‘when we were in John's laboratory'. At scientific meetings, there is always a period of informal ‘Casida tales' ranging from practical jokes that extend for decades to stories of John and the charming eccentrics in his laboratory.”

“There is also a uniform awe and respect among his alumni. John set a high standard of ethics as well as work ethic in the field…What drives any of us, and particularly John Casida? Clearly wealth and fame were not important drivers, but there was a competitive spirit. The success of his many alumni brought him pleasure. We are confident John appreciated the tremendous contribution his career made to pesticide toxicology, the environment, human health and agriculture.”

In talking to numerous Casida alumni, the authors concluded “that he did it for the fun of science.”

Casida alumnus Sarjeet Gill, now UC Riverside distinguished professor emeritus, described him “the preeminent toxicologist in the world.”

In their abstract, the authors pointed out that Casida's “research in pesticide toxicology led to more effective agricultural chemicals that are far safer for human and environmental health. He used pesticides as probes for his fundamental studies of metabolism and mode of action, resulting in great insight into biological chemistry and the underlying mechanisms of regulatory biology, ranging from voltage-gated sodium channels, through the ryanodine receptor and calcium regulation, the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-gated chloride channel, to the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. These discoveries, among many others, have had a profound impact on pharmacology and toxicology.”

Casida's research career “started with the introduction of DDT into agricultural practice and continued to assist in the development of many pesticides that dominate the market today,” the authors wrote, that he “trained multiple generations of toxicologists who obtained leading positions in government, industry and academics.”

Casida, born Dec. 22, 1929, spent his formative years in Madison, Wis. He received three degrees at the University of Wisconsin: his bachelor's degree in entomology in 1951; his masters in biochemistry in 1952; and a doctorate in entomology and biochemistry in 1954. He joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin for six years, advancing to full professor, and then accepted a faculty position at UC Berkeley, where he remained active in teaching and research until his death on June 30, 2018.

His wife, Katherine “Kati” Faustine Monson, a well-known artist, died in 2021. Survivors include two sons, Eric of BeRex Corp., Berkeley, and Mark, professor of theoretical chemistry, Grenoble-Alps University, Grenoble, France. Casida “loved laboratory science and this, coupled with insatiable curiosity and a gift for finding the unexpected, led to papers from his laboratory sparkling with creativity,” the authors shared. “He similarly loved teaching at all levels and had just finished grading the final examination in his toxicology class at the time of his passing.”

“The phrase ‘long and productive career' is often used in remembrances, but this phrase is seldom more appropriately applied than when it describes J. E. Casida,” Hammock and Li wrote. “His first lead author paper was published when he was an undergraduate in Science Magazine. John was productive until his last brief illness, and even during this period of hospitalization he was planning his next works.”

Professor Casida is sorely missed by his colleagues and the broad field of toxicology and pharmacology, they said.