Remember the ravenous light brown apple moth (LBAM) and all the controversy? The invasive agricultural pest, from Down Under, soars high on the agenda at the Northern California Entomology Societys meeting on Thursday, Nov. 5 in Concord. Also on the agenda: honey bee regulatory research.
The "honey bee reproductive ground plan" hypothesis that originated two decades ago at the University of California, Davis with bee geneticist Robert E Page Jr. (right) is drawing international attention.
There's something so magical and captivating about the metallic green sweat bee. Shouldn't it be yellow? No. Is it a bee? Yes. Does it attract attention? Definitely.
Chemical ecologist Walter Leal, professor and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, and his postdoctoral researcher Zain Syed have done it again. In August of 2008, they discovered the secret mode of the insect repellent, DEET.
A bee is a bee is a bee? Poet Gertrude Stein ("a rose is a rose is a rose") could have said that. True, there's only one species of honey bee in the United States--Apis mellifera, the Western or European honey bee--but there are several races.
The dull brown moth may be dull-looking but as noctuid cutworms they're not. We spotted this noctuid cutworm, soon to be a dull brown moth, last week on a yarrow in the Storer Gardens at the University of California, Davis.
Dianne DiBlasi did it. Back in January, we wrote a Bug Squad blog about Dianne DiBlasis three-year effort to overturn an Allendale, N.J. ban on backyard beekeeping. DiBlasi, who leads a group of teen environmentalists known as Team B.E.E.S.
Honey bees are involved in a unique "sting operation" utilizing their sense of keen smell to detect explosives and narcotics. And now a scientist from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, will talk about the project on Wednesday, Oct. 21 on the UC Davis campus.
