Posts Tagged: Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven

Grand Celebration

The garden is lookin' good.

That would be the half-acre Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a bee friendly garden planted last fall next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, University of California, Davis. It's part of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and was planted under the tenure of entomologist-professor Lynn Kimsey, then chair of the department. (She doubles as director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology.)

Melissa "Missy" Borel,  program manager for the California Center for Urban Horticulture and coordinator of the design competition (won by a Sausalito team), and UC Davis plant sciences student Alyssa Andersen, launched a volunteer program to keep the garden weed-free. 

On any given day, you'll see volunteers tending the garden--pulling weeds, planting replacements, and eyeing any ground squirrel/gopher damage.

Jackie Cheng, a junior majoring in environmental policy analysis and planning at UC Davis, is one of the volunteers. She recently worked in a patch of seaside daisies (Erigeron glaucus), a bee and butterfly favorite.  

The seaside daisy, a perennial, boasts lavender daisylike flowers that make spectacular photos.

Get ready. The grand opening celebration of the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 11. Plans are under way to make this a momentous event and a year-around campus destination.

Jackie Cheng

SEASIDE DAISIES--Jackie Cheng, a junior majoring in environmental policy analysis and planning at UC Davis, works in a patch of seaside daisies at the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Bee on Seaside Daisies

HONEY BEE forages among the seaside daises at the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee friendly garden at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, UC Davis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

View from an Almond Tree

VIEW from the shade of an almond tree (foreground) at the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven shows some of the many plants. Next to the almond tree (see pink ribbon) is a tower of jewels that will reach 9 to 10 feet high next spring and feature a cascade of pinkish-red blossoms. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Biodiversity in the Honey Bee Haven

When the half-acre Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven is implemented by the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis later this year, honey bees won't be the only ones enjoying the garden.

Expect to see butterflies, bumblebees and other insects.

Remember the project? Last December Häagen-Dazs ice cream committed $125,000 to the UC Davis Department of Entomology for the bee haven. A Sausalito team-- landscape architects Donald Sibbett and Ann F. Baker, interpretative planner Jessica Brainard and exhibit designer Chika Kurotaki--won the design competition, which drew 30 entries. One was submitted from as far away as England.

The key goals of the garden are to provide bees with a year-around food source, to raise public awareness about the plight of honey bees and to encourage visitors to plant bee-friendly gardens of their own.   

We’re all eagerly looking forward to the garden, which will be dedicated in October.

Meanwhile, scientists at the Laidlaw facility plan to examine the diversity of insects already there. One insect we saw there last week was a soapberry bug on a flowering almond tree. 

So bees, butterflies, bumblebees and soapberry bugs.

Among others.

Lots of others.  

Soapberry bug

SOAPBERRY BUG crawls along an almond tree branch at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis. The almond tree will be part of the Haagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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