Ongoing research

In March of 2012 when we were touring The Bee Collective's Bee Sanctuary near The Domes on the UC Davis campus with beekeeper/manager Derek Downey, we remember seeing an unusual "bee hive"--a wood duck box, moved there from a rural location after swarming honey bees claimed it.

In the last post I described some experiments I was conducting to determine if the redshouldered stink bug could be the cause of some "mysterious" cases of pecky rice. The result is clear: when caged on heading rice plants, this stink bug can definitively feed on developing kernels and cause peck.

Date: December 13, 2013 Time: 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM Contact: Anita Hunt Sponsor: Lindcove Research & Extension Center Location: 22963 Carson Ave, Exeter, CA 93221, USA Citrus growers and other Ag professionals are invited to attend the University of California, Lindcove Research and Extension Center An...

A note just caught my eye of China requesting to export fresh apples to the US. They already are the major exporter of apple juice to the US, and now fresh fruit.

It's rather troubling trying to rear subtropical butterflies, Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae), in late autumn. The string of warm sunny days in late November meant plenty of days for Gulf Frits to mate and reproduce.

Reposted (with permission) from the UC ANR blog Invasive Plants in Southern California Link to original post (December 6, 2013): Medusahead in San Diego County written by Carl Bell Medusahead [Elymus (Taeniatherum) caput-medusae] is a relatively new but serious invasive grass in San Diego County.

It's no secret that bugs often get a bad rap. Take the negative expression, "Bah, Humbug!" uttered by Ebenezer Scrooge, a Charles Dickens character. Now it seems that everyone who dislikes Christmas says it, with an emphasis on "bug.

If you have ever wondered why smoke rising during calm weather when there is a "ceiling", where there is warm air sitting on cold in an inversion, here is an explanation from our biometeorologist Rick Snyder at UC Davis. The smoke rises because the heated air is less dense than the surrounding air.

They're calling it "The December Event." Because that's what it is. It's an event held in December, specifically Saturday, Dec. 7 from noon to 3 p.m.

Courtesy of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis This creative project from GeoWiki seeks to get croudsourced feedback on crop types from participants around the world. They say: By 2050 we will need to feed more than 2 billion additional people on the Earth.