Wished: The First Bumble Bee of the Yr in Yolo or Solano Counties – Bug Squad

The late Robbin Thorp of UC Davis, a world authority on bees, appeared ahead to seeing the primary bumble bee of the yr. (Picture by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Wished: the primary bumble bee of the yr in Yolo or Solano Counties! In case you’re the primary to {photograph} one and electronic mail it to the Bohart Museum of Entomology you may win the prize: a espresso cup designed with a picture of the endangered Franklin’s bumble bee.

What’s all of it about? The Bohart Museum of Entomology is launching its second annual Robbin Thorp Memorial Bumble-Bee-of-the-Yr Contest to see who can discover and {photograph} the primary bumble bee of 2022 in Yolo or Solano counties.

Individuals are to seize a picture of a bumble bee within the wild in both of the 2 counties and electronic mail the picture to bmuseum@ucdavis.edu, with the main points of time, date and place. The picture have to be recognizable as a bumble bee, stated contest coordinator Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology. 

The winner will obtain a espresso cup designed with the endangered bumble bee that the late Robbin Thorp carefully monitored—Franklin’s bumble bee, Bombus franklini, recognized to exist in a small space by the California-Oregon border.  UC Davis doctoral alumnus Fran Keller, a professor at Folsom Lake School and a Bohart Museum scientist, designed the cup. Bohart scientist Brennen Dyer photographed the specimen.

Thorp, a world authority on bees and a distinguished emeritus  professor of entomology at UC Davis, at all times appeared ahead to discovering or seeing the primary bumble bee of the yr within the space. 

The native black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, is the primary bumble bee to emerge within the space, in response to Thorp. It forages on manzanitas, wild lilacs, wild buckwheats, lupines, penstemons, clovers, and sages, amongst others.

Thorp served on the UC Davis entomology college for 30 years, from 1964 to 1994. Though he achieved emeritus standing in 1994, he continued to interact in analysis, instructing and public service till a number of weeks earlier than his dying on June 7, 2019 at age 85 at his house in Davis.

Charlie Casey Nicholson, winner of the inaugural contest, together with his prized espresso cup.

The inaugural winner of the competition was UC Davis postdoctoral researcher Charlie Casey Nicholson, who photographed B. melanopygus, in a manzanita patch  at 3:10 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021 within the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Backyard to say the respect. 

Nicholson, a researcher within the UC Davis Division of Entomology and Nematology labs of Professor Neal Williams, a pollination ecologist, and Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño, is a 2015 alumnus of The Bee Course, the place Thorp taught from 2002 by means of 2018.  The nine-day intensive workshop, geared for conservation biologists and pollination ecologists and regarded the world’s premiere native bee biology and taxonomic course, takes place yearly in Portal, Ariz., on the Southwestern Analysis Station, a part of the American Museum of Pure Historical past, N.Y. 

Kimsey praised Thorp for his experience, generosity and kindness. Kimsey, who first met Thorp when she was a graduate pupil at UC Davis, stated that though he wasn’t her main professor, “my challenge was on bees and he was extremely useful and supportive. His enthusiasm about pollinators and bees specifically really grew after he retired, and he continued serving to college students and researchers and was the spine of a lot analysis. His assist and kindness was matched by his undemanding help and experience.”

In 2014, Thorp co-authored two books, Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Information (Princeton College) and California Bees and Blooms: A Information for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday).

Thorp,  the final recognized individual to see Franklin’s bumble bee in its native habitat, noticed it in 2006 close to Mt. Ashland. The bee inhabits–or did–a 13,300-square-mile space inside the five-county space of Siskiyou and Trinity in California; and Jackson, Douglas and Josephine in Oregon. 

Thorp sighted 94 Franklin’s bumble bees in that space in 1998, however by 2003, the tally had dropped to a few. Thorp noticed none in 2004 and 2005; one in 2006; and none since. Thorp’s decided hunt for the bumble bee resulted within the CNN publication of “The Previous Man and the Bee,” a spin-off of Hemingway’s “The Previous Man and the Sea.”