Fall 2012
Elusive Butterfly
The Melissa Arctic (Oeneis melissa) is the only species found in the Pacific Northwest that was not included in David James and David Nunnallee’s Life Histories of Cascadia Butterflies.
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Fall 2012
Life Histories: The Butterflies of Cascadia
A glorious sunny day in April after a long cool spring, it is Earth Day in Cowiche Canyon near Yakima, and the Cowiche Canyon Conservancy is hosting an educational field day. Scores of people armed with water bottles and binoculars are ambling down the trail toward presentations on birds, salmon, and geology as well as butterflies. Executive director Betsy Bloomfield fills me in on the conservancy’s endeavors as she guides me downstream to a station manned by David James.
James, a research entomologist at the Irrigated Tree Fruit Research Center in Prosser, has with coauthor David Nunnallee published Life Histories of Cascadia Butterflies (Oregon State … » More …
Fall 2012
New & noteworthy
Images That Injure
edited by Susan Dente Ross and Paul Martin Lester
Praeger, 2011
WSU English professor Ross and her colleagues examine pictorial stereotypes in the media.
Seaside Stories
by S.R. Martin, Jr. ’74
Blue Nile Press, 2009
Short stories of life in Seaside, on California’s Monterey Peninsula.
Life Histories of Cascadia Butterflies
by David G. James and David Nunnallee
Oregon State University Press, 2011
A unique chronicle of the life cycles of the butterfly species native to Cascadia. Read the feature article.
Summer 2012
Video: How to inseminate honey bee queens
Sue Cobey, a bee breeder who splits her time between Washington State University and the University of California at Davis, where she manages the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, describes instrumental insemination of honey bee queens.
Cobey developed the New World Carniolan honey bee stock in the 1980s, and is one of the world’s top experts on honey bee queens, genetic diversity, and inseminating bees.
Summer 2012
Raising queens
Few things are as mysterious and amazing as the life of the queen bee, says bee breeder Sue Cobey. Just a few days after she hatches from her cell, the queen’s fertility is optimal and she has just a brief time to mate for the rest of her four-year life.
The timing is critical, says Cobey, as she describes the process to a roomful of rapt Puget Sound-area beekeepers. If the weather is warm and mild, she leaves the hive, flying low at first to avoid her own colony’s drones before heading to a place where drones from other hives are waiting for a queen … » More …
Spring 2012
Living the right-sized life
I want to walk on water, climb walls, and dance on the ceiling. If insects can do it, it’s only fair that I should, too.
But this thing called physics has decreed otherwise. Carol Anelli, a WSU entomologist, can tell you why, having a lifelong fascination with ways insects can at times make us seem relatively slow, earthbound, and weak.
Carol Anelli (Photo Shelly Hanks)
Anelli first came upon the wonders of insects as a child among the woods and fields of a suburbanizing central Connecticut. She would pull caterpillars from her … » More …
Fall 2004
The Butterfly Lady
Like many children, Chris Hunter Hebdon enjoyed being outdoors, searching for insects on the ground, in the water, and on plants. Beetles were her favorite.
Her love of insects came from her mother, who, when she returned to school to become a biology teacher, took Hebdon with her on field trips in the Walla Walla area.
Hebdon’s fascination with creatures that crawl, fly, hop, and squirm intensified while she was a student at Washington State University (’74 Entomology), and it has metamorphosed into a growing business-the Susquehanna Butterfly Co.
From late May well into October, her booth at a farmer’s market in the Binghamton, New … » More …
Spring 2004
Building a better bee trap
Bee-trap manufacturers like to use a chemical substance called pheromones to attract bees into traps and away from people. Problem is, they don’t always work.
Providing the right amount of pheromones is imperative. Too many pheromones or too much of one of its components repels bees, and the amount of pheromones that is optimal for attracting bees may vary during a day, depending on temperature and light. Prashanta Dutta, assistant professor in mechanical and materials engineering, has been working with Spokane-based Sterling International to build a better bee trap-one in which the release of very tiny amounts of pheromones can be carefully monitored and adjusted.
… » More …
Winter 2005
A Sweet Buzz: Honey
Entomologist Steve Sheppard has never gotten over his wonder at how people came to raise swarms of stinging insects for the honey they produce.
“To see this guy dumping out thousands of bees to collect honey from their hive. . .” He shakes his head. “It’s amazing that humans ever figured it out to do that.”
But the Washington State University associate professor, who not only keeps bees himself, but unflinchingly opens beehives with his bare hands, understands the passion for honey.
People prize it as a delicacy and demand it as a staple. They cherish some honeys for their color and admire others for … » More …
Summer 2005
Bear Bones: A Murder Mystery
It must have been easy to drop the body into this part of Pullman, a
section that sees so little traffic. The old county road was research
land where hardly anyone but the groundskeepers ventured. But somebody
had an ugly secret to hide. » More ...