Who will find and photograph the first bumble bee of the year?

The sixth annual Robbin Thorp Memorial First-Bumble Bee-of-the-Year Contest will begin at 12:01, Jan. 1, 2026. The first person to photograph or video a bumble bee in the two-county area of Solano and Yolo and send to the Bohart Museum of Entomology at [email protected] will win a coffee cup designed with the endangered Franklin's bumble bee, the bee that Thorp monitored on the California-Oregon border for decades.

The UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology today published its 2025 "News in Review," with a message from the administration--Joanna Chiu, professor and department chair, and Rachel Vannette, professor and vice chair--and news featuring highlights of the year.

Marshall McMunn, coordinator of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology seminars for the 2025-26 academic year, has announced the list of speakers for the fall and spring quarters.

All seminars will take place at 12:10 p.m. on Wednesdays  in 122 Briggs Hall. They also will be on Zoom. The Zoom link: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672.

The California Master Beekeeper Program (CAMBP), based at UC Davis, and The HIVE Tasting Room and Kitchen in Woodland, have joined forces to present two January courses at The HIVE.

The first is The Science of Honey Tasting  from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., on Saturday, Jan. 24 and the second is The Science of Mead Tasting, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 25. The workshops celebrate bees, beekeeping, and the sensory sciences.

Rithika Senthilkumar, an undergraduate research scholar in the UC Davis Vector Genetics Laboratory (VGL), School of Veterinary Medicine, has been awarded a highly competitive 2025 Promega D.O.O.R.S. (Development of Our Research Scientists) Scholarship.

(See more images in Photo Gallery)

Two UC Davis doctoral candidates—Alexia “Lexie” Martin and Abigail “Abby” Lehner-- planned and organized the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house on “Bees and Their Mimics.”

Honey bee specialist Richard Martinez of the E. L. Niño lab will present his exit seminar, hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, on Wednesday, Dec. 3 in Room 122 of Briggs Hall.

UC Davis Distinguished Professor Emerita Diane Ullman of the Department of Entomology and Nematology is featured in a newly released three-part video series produced by the UC Davis Emeriti Association in its ongoing video project to preserve the history of UC Davis and celebrate its retired colleagues.

The book, “The Art of the Bee: Shaping the Environment from Landscapes to Societies," authored by noted honey bee geneticist Robert E. Page Jr.--retired from administrative positions at UC Davis and Arizona State University (ASU)--is now translated into the German language by C. H. Beck Verlag, one of Germany’s oldest publishing houses. 

A book launch will take place Thursday, Nov. 27 at the Deutches Museum in Munich where Page will present a public lecture. 

UC Davis nematologists, including Valerie Williamson, professor emerita in the Department of Plant Pathology, and associate professor Shahid Siddique, Department of Entomology and Nematology, have long wondered how the plant-parasitic nematode, the Northern root-knot nematode, is able to infect such a wide range of organisms, from monocots and dicots to annual crops and woody plants.