Test PB Collection: FTE

WAS-Up? The Western Apicultural Society's annual conference. Two bee specialists at the University of California, Davis, will be among the speakers when the Western Apicultural Society (WAS) meets Aug. 30-Sept. 2 in Salem, Ore.

Ever heard of a polyester bee? We encountered a plasterer or "polyester" bee on a recent trip to Bodega Bay.

Three little words can help us determine what to plant in a bee friendly garden: "attractive to bees." Escallonia, a fast-growing evergreen shrub often planted as a hedge or screen, is indeed attractive to bees. Bees work the blossoms like there's no tomorrow--and no colony collapse disorder.

Our Artemisia, a silvery-leafed shrub bordering our bee friendly garden, looks quite orange and black these days. It's not for lack of water or some exotic disease. It's the ladybug (aka lady beetle) population. If you look closely, you'll see eggs, larvae and pupae and the adults.

Talk about agility. When you watch a honey bee foraging, it's a lesson in aerial acrobatics. She glides to her target flower, touching down gracefully and accurately. As she gathers nectar, she's vertical, horizontal, upside down and right side up again.

It's raining bumble bees in our pool. Yellow-faced bumble bees (Bombus vosnesenskii). And honey bees (Apis mellifera), too. While nectaring lavender, catmint, tower of jewels, sedum and other plants, some of the foragers land in our pool. Talk about no depth perception.

It's not often you see a ladybug and a honey bee sharing the same plant. The ladybug, a predator in disguise, devours aphids like a kid does M&Ms. The honey bee, all buzziness, works furiously to collect nectar or pollen for her hive. Sometimes a lavender patch can bring them together.

The garden is lookin' good. That would be the half-acre Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a bee friendly garden planted last fall next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, University of California, Davis.

Honey bee research at the University of California, Davis, recently received a $900 boost, thanks to artists with a honey of hearta honey of a heart for the plight of honey bees.

It's good to see so much interest in bees. When folks think of bees, they usually think "honey bees." However, our European or western honey bee (Apis mellifera) is one of a total of seven species of honey bees found throughout the world. Worldwide, there are some 20,000 described species of bees.