Ongoing research

Head on over to the haven on Friday, May 6. That would be the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven. The occasion: It's National Public Gardens Day, as declared by the American Public Gardens Association, and UC Davis is participating. The haven, located next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr.

Some outstanding news was just released yesterday at the annual AUVIS Xponential 2016 conference in New Orleans, which will likely make it much easier to fly sUAS for educational purposes.

Forget the polls that claim to know who will win the U.S. Presidency. Let's hear it from the insects, namely the woolly bear caterpillars that populate the cliffs of Bodega Bay. They may know.

Forget about the birds and the bees. Just think about the bees. The 141st annual Dixon May Fair, California's oldest fair, is "Buzzing with Excitement," and that's the theme of the fair, which opens Thursday, May 5 for a four-day run.

The 2016 UCCE grain corn variety trial was planted on April 27th. The trial is located in the Delta on Tyler Island. Three replicate blocks of eighteen varieties were planted by air planter.

KMJ 580 radio's early-morning Ag Report which is produced by ag reporter, Don York, featured a short audio segment on the upcoming California farm demonstration network's series of farm visits featuring innovative soil care farmers.

When the monarchs return to southern California and central Mexico to overwinter, the residents rejoice. When the bumble bees emerge from their nests in the spring, we, too, rejoice. They are like the swallows of Capistrano and the monarchs of Pacific Grove.

I have been getting some questions about the new variety M-209. The most common question is how it responds to blast. Unfortunately, we do not know the answer to that. The last two years there has been very little blast in the valley, so we haven't been able to evaluate M-209's response to blast.

Each of us have the entire blueprint for our bodies contained in every cell, and the same is true of plants. This information is stored in the form of an extremely long molecule known as DNA (in human cells its length is ~6 feet).

This "B" gets an "A" for good grooming. We recently watched a honey bee land on the edge of a planter. "Hmm," we thought. "Why is she landing there? She should be foraging on the flowers in the pollinator garden." We soon found out.