A honey bee exhibit at the 133rd annual Dixon May Fair featuring Cooperative Extension Apiculturist Eric Mussen has just won a top regional honor.
The exhibit, housed appropriately in the floriculture building, won second place in the Western Fairs’ Association’s non-competitive exhibit category. WFA represents fairs and festivals in 27 states and Canada.
“The honey bee exhibit was a first at the Dixon May Fair and very popular,” said Ester Armstrong, the fair’s interim chief executive officer. “Dr. Mussen drew large, interested crowds, all wanting to know about the plight of the honey bee.” A record 89,000 attended the four-day fair, the oldest running fair in California.
Mussen, a University of California apiculturist and member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty for the past 32 years, fielded questions from fairgoers. He also provided educational displays of bees and beekeepers.
Bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey, manager of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis, and research associate Kim Fondrk loaned the fair a bee observation hive, a glassed-in facility showing the queen bee, workers and drones.
Over the last two years, individual beekeepers have reported losing 30 to 100 percent of their bees due to a mysterious phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder. Honey bees pollinate one third of the American diet.
Another popular UC Davis exhibit at the fair: live insects provided by the Bohart Museum of Entomology, which houses the seventh largest insect collection in North America. Brian Turner, public outreach coordinator at the BohartMuseum displayed Madagascar hissing cockroaches, Vietnamese walking sticks, tarantulas and millipedes. The BohartMuseum, housed in Academic Surge on the UC Davis campus, is dedicated to teaching, research and public service.
Both UC Davis exhibits will return to this year’s fair, set May 7-10 at 655 S. First St., Dixon.
It makes sense that one of the oldest insects should be at the state's oldest fair. . The oldest known bee, found encased in amber in Burma, is thought to be 100 million years old. The specimen is at least 35 to 45 million years older than any other known bee fossil, scientists say.
Eric Mussen
UC EXTENSION APICULTURIST Eric Mussen with a bee observation hive at the 2008 Dixon May Fair. The exhibit, featuring question-and-answer-sessions with Mussen, just won second place in a Western Fairs Association competition. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Zeroing in
ZEROING IN--A honey bee targets a nectarine blossom. Honey bees will again be featured at the Dixon May Fair when it opens May 7 for a four-day run. The Dixon May Fair is California's longest running fair. This year marks its 134th year.(Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
As a child, Dennis Price loved to watch the honey bees. “I could sit and watch them all day,” he said.
He still does. Love the honey bees, that is.
And he never tires of watching them.
If you attended the California State Fair on Sunday, Aug. 17 or Saturday, Aug. 23, you probably saw the enthusiastic Davis resident, now a beekeeper, in the honeybee booth in the California Foodstyle building. He and his partner Karen Flores were handing out honey samples and answering questions about bees, especially about the bee observation hive where visitors could watch the queen bee, worker bees and drones.
“About one-fourth of them were afraid of the bees, but about one-half of them were as fascinated with bees as I am,” Price said.
Dennis Price is a new beekeeper. Since April. So far, his six hives have produced 81 pounds of honey. The samples he served were absolutely delicious. Liquid gold.
Price is a graduate of UC Davis, but not in entomology. “I used to play racquetball with Larry Godfrey (Extension entomologist at UC Davis), though,” he said.
Price is a 1989 graduate of UC Davis (chemistry and toxicology) and now works for ESA Biosciences, a company based in Chelmsford, Mass. He’s the Western regional account manager, traveling from a route from Seattle to Hawaii, but mostly throughout California.
And in his “spare” time, he keeps bees.
“Bees are so underappreciated and so ignored and they work so hard for us,” Price said.
Above his head in the California Beekeepers Association booth was a sign that read:
The average honey bee makes just 1/2 teaspoon of honey during her lifetime
Honey bees fly about 55,000 miles just to make one pound of honey. That's equal to 1.5 times around the world.
One third of your diet is derived from insect-pollinated plants, and 80 percent of that is done by honey bees.
It used to be that newborn pigs (such as those below) hogged the attention of fairgoers at the California State Fair. They still do, but make way for the bees.
The bees are buzzing around the sunflowers in the garden section and they’re making honey in the CaliforniaFoodstyleBuilding.
And if you’re like me, you’ll go to the fair just to see the bees.
You have until Sept. 1 to check them out.
Karen Flores and Dennis Price
Karen Flores and Dennis Price: The bees have their attention and their respect. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Liquid gold
Olympians have gold medals, but beekeepers have liquid gold. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Observation hive
Fairgoers check out the observation hive in the Californa Foodstyle building at the California State Fair. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Piglets not the sole attraction
Piglets shown by the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine are a key attraction at the California State Fair, but bees are drawing a lot of attention, too. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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