Bees
Prosser stories
Over a century, Washington State University’s research and extension center has seen a lot of stories and fostered a lot of innovations. Read some of them at these links:
The Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center at Prosser website
HistoryLink essay on WSU Prosser by Elizabeth Gibson (drawing heavily on the essays by Singleton and Proebsting)
AgWeatherNet is the world’s largest public-access weather system updates every 15 minutes via data collected from over 175 stations.
For years, WSU Prosser was the home of WSU’s wine science research. With … » More …
Patterns
Just the right combination of cold and moist conditions last winter blanketed the trees, buildings, and grounds of the WSU Pullman campus with a layer of hoarfrost. The tiny, icy spikes added a new and beautiful dimension, even drawing my eyes to a fresh look at the cougar statue outside the Lewis Alumni Centre. I walk past that leaping figure nearly every workday, and yet rarely look at it like I did that day.
Sometimes we need a new way to perceive the world around us, even those parts that are invisible. For example, cancerous tumors notoriously adapt and resist treatment as they invade our … » More …
Plan Bee
Build a bee hotel
Help some local pollinators by building your own bee hotel.
There are plenty of tutorials and guides out there. Below are a few easy steps to quickly building a home for solitary bees, followed by links to some other guides.
With a craft knife, cut both ends off the plastic bottle to create a cylinder.
Make your lengths of bamboo, grass or reeds 3 cm shorter than the bottle to protect them from rain – use sharp garden clippers to trim them. Bees can’t burrow through the knots in bamboo, so avoid lengths with too many knots.
Use sandpaper to smooth the … » More …
Gallery: Bee beds and hotels
A unique look at the interplay between wild North American bees, European bees, and Washington farmers.
Photographer Zach Mazur ’06 highlights the apian stars of Southeast Washington’s thriving alfalfa seed industry. The spare yet stunning landscape is home to millions of native alkali bees which, together with leafcutter bees, make Walla Walla County one of the nation’s top producers.
Read more about wild bees and pollinators in “Plan Bee.”
Why do bees make hexagons in their hives?
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 …
The Secret Death of Bees
In search of a tougher honey bee
WASHINGTON STATE apple growers have a problem. The honey bees that pollinate their trees can be a little wimpy when it comes to temperature.
Apple growers prefer to have the king, or primary, blooms pollinated, because they produce the biggest apples. But all too often, the trees bloom during cool weather. And the resident honey bees, being mostly of Italian descent and therefore partial to Mediterranean weather, hole up when the temperature dips below 55 degrees F.
Other bees do better in cool weather but often have quirks of their own that limit their usefulness as pollinators.
So Steve Sheppard—associate professor of entomology at Washington … » More …