Posts Tagged: Kathy Keatley Garvey

To bee or not to bee depends on the crop

Bees do it. Birds do it. Even bats do it. They all help plants reproduce by carrying pollen from one flower to another. Beetles, butterflies, wasps, flies and moths are also pollinators.

About 35 percent of the food we eat depends on the assistance of bees to pollinate plants and trees so they will produce fruit, nuts or vegetables. It takes 1.6 million colonies of honey bees to pollinate California's 800,000 acres of almond trees.

Our food choices would be dramatically reduced if bees weren't around to pollinate. To illustrate what the produce section of a grocery store would look like in a world without bees, Whole Foods Market removed the products that depend on pollination from one of its stores and took a photo. See the difference: http://ucanr.tumblr.com/post/84164840510/kqedscience-whole-foods-shows-customers-the. Without bees, more than half the fruits and vegetables were eliminated.  

Honey bees and other pollinators are being threatened by the drought, disease, mites, loss of habitat and food sources, according to Eric Mussen, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Entomology at UC Davis and bee expert.

But not everyone wants help from pollinators. To produce seedless fruit, some citrus growers cover their mandarin trees to keep out bees because the mandarins, or tangerines, produce seeds if the tree is pollinated. Most consumers prefer their mandarins to be seedless.

Beth Grafton-Cardwell, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Entomology at UC Riverside and director of Lindcove Research and Extension Center, talks about the role of pollinators in California agriculture in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8suOt5PnzWc&feature=youtu.be.

To see photos of different kinds of pollinators and to learn more about how to help them thrive, visit our pollinator page. On May 8, help count the pollinators in your community and add them to the map at http://beascientist.ucanr.edu.

'Bug Squad' blog recognized among 'Top 50'

The University of California Bug Squad blog, written by Kathy Keatley Garvey of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, has been named one of the "Best 50 Insect Blogs" by the website OnlineCourses.net.

"Bugs are like certain people in your life: you can't live with them, you can't live without them," the website says. "Hence this listing of the Web's best bug-related blogs. You'll find sites on the battle of the birds and the bees and a ton of info on what makes insects so unique to our planet."

Garvey noted that everyone has "top lists" nowadays - top 10 superfoods, top 10 things to do, top 10 places to go, bucket lists, etc. Perhaps creating such a list is nothing more than a marketing ploy, but it is recognition, nonetheless.

OnlineCourses.net said Bug Squad brings a sharp and crisp, almost journalistic focus to the bug blogosphere.

"We were particularly interested in their coverage of the Bring Your Own Bug movement," the website said.

It wasn't mentioned by OnlineCourses, but I believe Bug Squad's numerous, high quality photos of insects, especially bees, is one of the things that sets it apart.

Congratulations to Bug Squad.

Honey bee on Cape Mellow from Kathy Keatley Garvey's Bug Squad blog.