Glenn

Every year variety trials are established throughout Californias rice production areas. The trials are a cooperative effort between UCCE and the Rice Experiment Station (RES).

During 2010 and 2011, the distribution of rice blast in California expanded considerably. The disease was found in areas where it typically had not been a problem in the past. Yolo County is one of these areas.

2012 Annual Rice Grower Meetings Sponsored by UC Cooperative Extension -------------- 4 Locations -------------- WHERE & WHEN Williams: Monday, Jan. 23, 8:30 am, Granzellas Banquet Hall, 457 - 7th Street, Williams Richvale: Monday, Jan. 23, 1:30 pm, Evangelical Church, 5219 Church St.

The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America should be required reading for anyone interested in honey bees, crop pollination and migratory beekeepers. Award-winning journalist Hannah Nordhaus tells the story of migratory beekeeper John Miller of Gackle, N.D.

There is a lot of information out there! While looking for something else, I ran across a Western Farm Press article from last fall about Roundup Ready canola growing on roadsides etc. I've heard Doug Munier talk about this issue and I'm sure many of you have too.

Nero may have fiddled while Rome burned, but the honey bees just kept on working. We recently visited an apiary in Glenn County, and the honey bees were all over the fiddlenecks in patches adjacent to the hives. A springtime scene of golden flowers and buzzing bees. An artist's dream...

Very rare. Very rare, indeed. It has the eyes of a drone and the body of a worker bee. And no, this is not science fiction. It's a mutant honey bee. "They're not totally uncommon," said Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology. "But they're there.

One of the highlights of Susan Cobey's class on "The Art of Queen Bee Rearing" is a visit to commercial queen bee breeders in Northern California. Cobey is a bee breeder-geneticist at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis, and Washington State University.

*This was an article that Doug Munier and I put together and tweaked for a couple orchard crop newsletters in summer/fall 2010. I thought I'd repost it here for posterity...

With the opening of baseball season, it's "peanuts, popcorn and Cracker Jacks!" But to beekeepers, it's peanuts. Or rather, peanut-like shells. Immature queen bees grow to maturity in cells that resemble peanut shells. When UC Davis bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey, manager of the Harry H.