Ongoing research

Reminder! Nickels Soil Lab Annual Field Day Wednesday, May 15, 2013 Green Bay Avenue, Arbuckle, CA 8:30am - 12:15pm Just added: After lunch a demonstration of modified airblast sprayer for better pest control in tree tops!!...

(Editor's Note: This luncheon has been postponed until October 2013. Details forthcoming) The buzz around the UC Davis campus is a June luncheon. Not just any luncheon, but "A Luncheon in the Garden.

Seeing yellow these days? As inthose brightly-blooming yellow-flowering shrubs along roads and hillsides from the Bay Area to the Sierra Nevada foothills. BroomFrench, Spanish, and Scotchis in full spring bloom, even at higher elevations.

It was definitely a hot spot. Honey bees foraging last week on a pomegranate tree on Hopkins Road, west of the UC Davis main campus, competed for food on hundreds of blossoms. We counted five honey bees on one blossom alone in what amounted to a pushing/shoving match.

Egg, five nymphal stages, and adult bed bugs, Cimex lectularius. Photo by Dong-Hwan Choe. Bed bugs are quickly becoming major household nuisance pests.

Stem and leaf blights are symptoms that appear for various reasons high rainfall or humidity, spray burn, chewing insect infestation. Here in California we can add other causes, such as drought and salinity burn.

Saturday, May 11 is "Moth-ers Day" at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California, Davis.

If you think that every insect on a flower is a honey bee, you should see what the UC Davis Department of Entomology is showcasing at the Dixon May Fair, May 9-12.

Here's a list of links for growers and homeowners on how to prepare for fire and in the case of fruit trees, how to treat them after they have burned and how to calculate the loss of a commercial fruit tree.

The timeworn water tower that stands in front of the Giacomazzi Dairy in Kings County is a hallmark of the farms endurance. It proclaims, Since 1893.