Test PB Collection: FTE

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.

Colony collapse disorder (CCD), the mysterious phenomonen characterized by honey bees abandoning their hives, is still with is, and the cause is still mysterious.

To catch a carpenter bee... The carpenter bees (Xylocopa tabaniformis) that nectar the sage, lavender, catmint and coral bells in our bee friendly garden move fast. How fast? As fast as a buzz. They buzz into a blur and then back into a buzz. Oh, but there are ways to capture their images.

If you like squash, you have a bee to thank. Without bees, no pollination. Without pollination, no squash. Honey bees in California pollinate some 100 agricultural crops, including fruits, nuts and vegetables. One of them is squash.

Look closely at Charles Darwin's ceramic face. You'll see selections from his secret notebooks and images of organisms that most influenced his scientific studies. His beard is peppered with moths. You'll also find barnacles, iguanas, finches, orchids and other creatures on his face.

A field of dreams, for a honey bee, almost certainly would be a field of lavender. Call it what you want, but if a bee could talk, it would probably be "lovely lavender.

Making a difference--that's what it's all about. An integrated pest management (IPM) team from the United States is in Central Asia for the third Integrated Pest Management Stakeholders' Forum, June 1-5 in Bishhek, Kyrgystan.