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Mint Condition
When the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven's grand opening celebration takes place on Saturday, Sept. 11, visitors can expect to see scores of flowers, including the ever-popular catmint (Nepeta).
Honey bees love the mints. So do bumble bees, carpenter bees, butterflies and assorted other insects.
The event, sponsored by Wells Fargo and co-sponsored by Annie's Homegrown, takes place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The half-acre bee friendly garden is located next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, University of California, Davis.
What else is in the garden?
Well, among the plant growth: acacia, almond, apple, artichoke, basil, blackberry, blueberry, broccoli, cape mallow, eggplant, elderberry, hawthorn, honeysuckle, Mexican hat flower, oregano, peppers, persimmon, plum, purple coneflower, redbud, salvia, Santa Barbara daisy, seaside daisy, strawberry, watermelon, wild roses and scores of other plants.
The key goals of the garden, a gift to the UC Davis Department of Entomology, are to provide bees with a year-around food source for the Laidlaw facility bees, to raise public awareness about the plight of honey bees, and to encourage visitors to plant bee-friendly gardens of their own. It's also a research site.
The grand opening celebration will include speeches (to start at 10:30 a.m.); rotating garden tours; children's activities; and a bee observation hive. Experts on honey bees, native bees, plants and the beautiful art work in the garden will be there to answer your questions.
You'll want to see the fabulous 6-foot-long honey bee, "Miss Bee Haven," sculpted by noted artist Donna Billick and funded by Wells Fargo. You'll marvel at the the colorful ceramic tiles beneath the sculpture and the two bee hive sculptures that grace the entrance, all by the UC Davis Art-Science Fusion Program, directed by Donna Billick and Diane Ullman.
The winning design team, from the Sausalito area, will be represented. The design is the work of landscape architects Donald Sibbett and Ann F. Baker, interpretative planner Jessica Brainard and exhibit designer Chika Kurotaki.
Cagwin and Dorward Landscape Contractors installed the garden, which was planted last fall. Häagen-Dazs will serve free ice cream, and Gimbal's Fine Candies will provide free samples of their popular candy.
Joining Wells Fargo as the main sponsor of the grand opening celebration is Annie's Homegrown, maker of Honey Bunny Grahams.
Check out the website for more information. You can download the PDF of the design plan, which includes the concept, plant list and layout.
More information? Contact Chris Akins, coordinator of the grand opening celebration at (530) 752-2120 or crakins@ucdavis.edu.
Bee and Catmint
Nectaring
Catching Up with a Leafcutter Bee
Leafcutter bees (Megachile spp.), so named because they cut leaves and petals to line their nests, are smaller than the honey bees but move faster. These native bees are easily recognizable by the black-white bands on their abdomen.
Catching them in flight requires a lot of patience.
We watched one leafcutter bee dart from catmint flower to catmint flower (Nepeta). It is 2 p.m. One movement of the camera and off it goes. One step toward it and it takes flight. A shadow over it and it vanishes.
This one (below) managed to maneuver around carder bees, honey bees, carpenter bees, assorted butterflies, a curious cat determined to sample the catmint, and a persistent spider that cunningly wove its web right between two stems.
Finally, it overcame all the obstacles for its reward: a long sip of nectar.
Caught in Flight
Sip of Nectar
Lovely Indeed
If we were to describe the cabbage white butterfly (Pieris rapae) in one word, it would be "lovely."Especially when it nectars from catmint (Nepeta) in the early evening, as the sun drops low in the horizon.
Butterfly expert Art Shapiro, professor of ecology and evolution at the University of California, Davis, says the species was introduced in southern Canada in the 1850s. "The great lepidopterist Samuel H. Scudder traced its spread, but was unable to resolve the history on the West Coast," he writes on the website, Art's Butterfly World.
"It was not in San Francisco in the early 1880s, but was abundant by the time of the earthquake (1906)."
Just look at it now. It's everywhere. In fact, every year Shapiro sponsors a contest to see who can find the first cabbage white of the year in the Davis-Sacramento area.
He usually wins.
Cabbage White
Ballroom Gown
Sneaky Moth
The female Greater Wax Moth (Galleria mellonella) is a sneaky creature.She flies around bee hives at night and when the opportunity presents itself--as it often does--in she goes to lay her eggs.
The egg hatch into larvae, which munch and crunch just about everything in sight.
The infestation is not pretty. Not only does it drive beekeepers bonkers, but a really bad infestation will drive the bees out.
Beekeepers remove the frames and freeze them, killing the larvae and any other pests that that might be in there--such as small hive beetles (Aethina tumida).
And an occasional honey bee.
The Mid-Atlantic Apicultural Research and Extension Consortium (MAAREC) provides excellent information on the wax moth.
MAAREC says the larvae are a mixed blessing: beekeepers dislike them but the larvae are "raised for use as fish bait, animal feed, scientific research and they are a good representative insect to use in Biology and Entomology classes."
Greater Wax Moth
Wax Moth Larvae
All About Bee Swarms
The peak bee season is winding down--along with the number of bee swarms."There aren't that many bees swarming this time of the year," said Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen, member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty. When bees swarm, they have to consider available food, he said, and the food supply is diminishing as we head into fall.
Often a homeowner will contact the bee biology folks here in the UC Davis Department of Entomology with this request: "I've got a bee swarm on my property. I don't want to kill them and I can't afford to pay for their removal. Do you know of anyone who can remove them for free?"
We usually provide the names of several beekeepers in the area who we know will oblige.
But ala Ghostbusters, "Who ya gonna call?"
Mussen, who writes the from the UC Apiaries newsletter and Bee Briefs, has an excellent piece on bee swarms on his website. It includes a definition of a swarm, what bees do, how swarms are removed and where to find beekeepers to remove them. He also points out that Africanized honey bees are more aggressive.
"Swarming is the honey bee’s method of colony reproduction," he writes in the "Removing Swarms" Bee Brief. "The old queen and half of the worker bees leave their former nest and seek a new home mostly in the spring, but sometimes in late summer. A few worker honey bees, we call 'scouts,' fly around areas in the vicinity of the old hive searching for a suitable, new habitat (the correct sized cavity with an easily protected entrance). Often, that job is not completed when the swarm “issues” from the hive. The outpouring of bees from the hive forms a large, buzzing cloud of insects that seems to be going every direction at once. That flying group of honey bees is the swarm. It is a phenomenal sight that frequently scares people. However, the bees eventually have to regroup, somewhere, while the search for a new home continues."
How do you find someone to remove them? Ala Ghostbusters, "who ya gonna call?"
Mussen advocates consulting the telephone directory (look under "beekeeper" or "beekeeping"). Another good source: the county agricultural commissioner's office.
Ready to Swarm
Swarm
On the Trunk
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