Find the first bumble bee, earn a coffee mug

What are you doing on New Year's Day? Weather permitting, you can begin searching for the first bumble bee of the year in Solano and Yolo counties.

If you photograph or video it, and you are judged the winner, a prize awaits you – in addition to bragging rights.

The fifth annual Robbin Thorp Memorial First-Bumble-Bee-of-the-Year Contest, sponsored by the Bohart Museum of Entomology, begins Jan. 1.

The first person to photograph or video a bumble bee in the two-county area and send to the Bohart Museum, at bmuseum@ucdavis.edu, will receive a coffee cup designed with the endangered Franklin's bumble bee, the bee that Thorp monitored on the California-Oregon border for decades. The entries must include the time, date and place.

The contest, launched in 2021, memorializes Thorp (1933-2019), a global authority on bees and a UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology, who died at age 85. A 30-year member of the UC Davis faculty, he retired in 1994, but continued working until several weeks before his death. Every year he looked forward to seeing the first bumble bee in the area.

The black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, is usually the first bumble bee to emerge in this area, Thorp used to say. It forages on manzanitas, wild lilacs, wild buckwheats, lupines, penstemons, clovers, and sages, among others.

Fairfield resident Nancy Hansen won the 2024 contest with a video of B. melanopygus that she emailed to the Bohart Museum at 10:57 a.m., Monday, Jan. 1. She took the video in her Madrone tree in her backyard.

Previous winners:

2023: Ria deGrassi of Davis photographed a B. melanopygus at 12:32, Jan. 8 on a ceanothus in her yard.

2022: Two scientists shared the 2022 prize: UC Davis doctoral candidate Maureen Page of the Neal Williams lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and horticulturist Ellen Zagory, retired director of public horticulture for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden. They each photographed a bumble bee foraging on manzanita (Arctostaphylos) in the 100-acre Arboretum at 2:30 p.m., Jan. 1. Page photographed a black-tailed bumble bee, B. melanopygus, while Zagory captured an image of the yellow-faced bumble bee, B. vosnesenskii.

2021: Postdoctoral researcher Charlie Casey Nicholson of the Neal Williams lab and the Elina Lastro Niño lab photographed a B. melanopygus at 3:10 p.m., Jan. 14 in a manzanita patch in the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden

The prized coffee cup features an image of the bee specimen, photographed by Bohart scientist Brennen Dyer, now collections manager, and designed by UC Davis doctoral alumnus Fran Keller, a professor at Folsom Lake College who is a lecturer with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and a Bohart Museum research associate. Previous winners are ineligible to win the prize.

A tireless advocate of pollinator species protection and conservation, Throp co-authored two books in 2014, during his retirement: "Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide" (Princeton University,) and "California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists" (Heyday).

The Bohart Museum the home of a worldwide collection of eight million insect specimens, is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. It also includes a live petting zoo, and an insect-themed gift shop.

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