A Honey of an Award

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 Bohart Museum displayed Madagascar hissing cockroaches, Vietnamese walking sticks, tarantulas and millipedes. The Bohart Museum, 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.