For being "retired," Hugh Dingle is one busy scientist. Dingle, an emeritus professor in the UC Davis Department of Entomology, recently returned to Davis after living in Australia for seven years and doing research at the University of Brisbane, Australia.
Cool temperatures and honey bees do not a good team make. Since honey bees don't forage until temperatures hit 50 to 55 degrees, we haven't seen many bees gathering pollen from our nectarine trees. If you love nectarines, there's a lot to love.
Earlier this month, I attended the 2011 Plant and Soil Conference which was held in Fresno this year. This annual meeting put on by the California Chapter of the American Society of Agronomy (http://calasa.ucdavis.
It's not just honey bees that forage among the cape mallows in the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at the University of California, Davis. The brilliant magenta flowers also draw assorted other insects. Such as flies...hover flies.
National No-till Farmer magazine has published an article by a member of the UC Conservation Tillage and Cropping Systems Workgroup, Michael Crowell. The Crowell family has been in the dairy business in Turlock for more than 100 years.
No thanks to the recent storms, almond orchards are encountering Nature's Extreme Makeover--from fluffy popcorn blossoms to tattered petals reminiscent of bottom-of-the-bag kernels. Still, there's something spectacular about driving down a rural road in Dixon, Calif.
