Ongoing research

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Honey bees don't like tulips, right? Right. You don't plant tulips to attract bees, and you don't attract bees with tulips. They prefer such bee friendly plants as lavender, salvia, catmint, sedum, cherry laurels and tower of jewelsnot to mention fruit, almond and vegetable blossoms.

When the University of California, Davis, celebrates its annual Picnic Day on Saturday, April 17, be sure to check out the bugs. Entomologists will showcase insects at the Bohart Museum of Entomology at 1124 Academic Surge on California Drive, and at Briggs Hall, off Kleiber Drive, from 11 a.m.

The Campus Buzzway, a quarter-acre field of wildflowers planted last fall near the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at the University of California, Davis, is brilliant in gold and blue, the UC Davis colors. The gold: California poppies. The blue (blue/purple): lupine.

Sweet! That one word aptly describes the generous donation by Gimbal's Fine Candies, San Francisco, to aid honey bee research at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at the University of California, Davis.

Picture this. It's a picture-perfect day on Thursday, April 1 at Olivarez Honey Bees, Inc. in Orland, Calif. Susan Cobey's queen bee-rearing class at the University of California, Davis, is touring the bee farm with guide Ray Olivarez Jr.

A golden bee on golden mustard. What could represent spring in California more than that? Well, besides the just-ended almond pollination season. Bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey, manager of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr.

It wouldn't dare rain on Susan Cobey's queen bee-rearing classes. And it didn't today. Well, a little sprinkle, but that was it. Bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey, manager of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr.

It probably wasn't colony collapse disorder. Probably not pesticides, a disease, malnutrition or stress, either. It could have been a pest.

If spring has sprung--and it has--it's also time to spring forward the next batch of noonhour seminars at the UC Davis Department of Entomology. The spring lectures are held every Wednesday, March 31 through May 26, from 12:10 to 1 p.m., in 122 Briggs Hall, Kleiber Drive.