Agriculture

Before the San Joaquin Valley was cultivated, vast grasslands stretched from the Sierra to the Coast Range with soil that contained significant organic matter a diversity of live and dead plant material and microbes that are key to soil health.

If you're around honey bees, you've seen their predators: crab spiders, orb weavers, praying mantids, birds and more. It's a tough world out there for pollinators.

Bee scientist James Nieh, a UC San Diego professor in the Section of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution, Division of Biological Sciences, will present the first fall quarter seminar hosted by UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

The UC Davis Storer Lectures for the academic year, 2019-2020 have been announced. They begin Oct. 15 and conclude on April 16, announced Jennifer Lynn Voight (jlvoight@ucdavis.edu).

Ever eaten a bug? Sure you have. Insect fragments are in just about all the foods we eat, from chocolate to coffee to wheat flour to pizza sauce to beer and more. An insect control company estimates that we eat, on the average, 140,000 "bug bits" every year. (See Business Insider.

This bug's for you. Ever tasted a cricket? A mealworm? An earthworm? You can if you attend the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house themed "Gobble, Gobble, Munch, Munch, Crunch: Entomophagy, to be held from 1 to 4 p.m., Saturday, Sept.

It was the fall of 2009 when a half-acre bee garden on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis campus, sprang to life. Headlines on colony collapse disorder dominated the news media, as scientists declared "honey bees are in trouble.

The Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, has scheduled nine special weekend open houses for the academic year.

A life well-lived. Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, was a global authority on bees and he generously shared his expertise with others.

Like any livestock management tool, livestock guardian dogs come with both costs and (hopefully) benefits. Some of these are easily calculated - for example, through today, we've spent $624.70 on dog food and veterinary costs related to our livestock guardian dogs this year.