Ongoing research

President Obama caught a little flak when he smacked a fly during a recent press interview in the White House. During the interview, a pesky fly buzzed around his head and then landed on his hand. Big mistake. The commander-in-chief nailed him. The bug stopped there. "I got the sucker," he said.

John Emery is a spider man. Oh, hes not a super hero who clings to city skyscrapers and chases villains and rescues damsels in distress. Hes the IT manager for Sue Mills, a company which sells school uniforms. But he's truly a spider man.

UC Davis bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey, manager of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr., Honey Bee Research Facility, is the kind of person who would give you the shirt off her back. Really. And that's exactly what she did when several visitors recently toured the Laidlaw facility.

The Smithsonian Institution is the place to "bee" on Monday, June 22. UC Davis pollinator specialist and researcher Robbin Thorp will join other bumble bee experts from across the country in a "Plight of the Bumble Bees" public symposium from 10 a.m.

Faster than a speeding bullet... As soon as UC Davis bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey opened a beehive and removed a chunk of honeycomb to show visitors, here came the speeding bullet. A fast camera shutter caught what the eye couldn't see. It was a queen yellowjacket taking dead aim at the comb.

WAS is not just the first and third person singular past indicative of be. It's the Western Apicultural Society, an organization dedicated to the science and art of rearing honey bees. You'll find scores of commericial beekeepers at the 31st annual WAS Conference, scheduled Aug.

Youre not going to be able to jump on the pomegranate bandwagon with your pockets bulging with gold without a lot of hard work, Kevin Day, farm advisor with UC Cooperative Extension Tulare County, told a reporter for a news story published May 14 in the Western Farm Press. Yes, hard work.

The competition was fierce. We're talking 800 postdoctoral scholars on the UC Davis campus, 12 finalists and two winners.

Honey bee geneticist Robert E. Page Jr. is in good company. Good company, indeed. Think scientists Marie Curie, Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin. Page, who received his doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 1980 and then became a noted geneticist at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr.

UC Davis forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey loves flies. So, every chance I get, I shoot an image for him. Many of the images wind up in his classroom PowerPoint presentations. "Keep 'em coming," he says. So, I shoot flies. Yes, indeed. I shoot flies. No, I am not a candidate for a 12-step program.