Bohart Museum open house spotlights insect societies

“Insect Societies,” featuring honey bees, ants and termites, will set the theme for the Bohart Museum of Entomology’s open house from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday.

The event, which is free and open to the public, is in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge building on Crocker Avenue, formerly California Drive, on the UC Davis campus.

Senior museum scientist Steve Heydon said the bee displays will include a bee observation hive from the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research facility; a cartoon of a waggle/round/break dance created by former UCD student and cartoonist Beth Urabe; and a framed photo of a bee sting by Kathy Keatley Garvey of the entomology department that went viral.

Billy Synk, staff research associate at the Laidlaw facility, will provide the bee observation hive, which he also brought to the debut event of the Honey and Pollination Center on Oct. 27 at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science.

Urabe’s cartoon depicts a waggle and round dance, behaviors performed by honey bees, and then on a humorous note, she added break dancing. She is a former cartoonist for the California Aggie newspaper,

The photo of the bee sting depicts a bee stinging Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen in the apiary at the Laidlaw facility. It won first place in a photo feature contest sponsored by an international agricultural-related organization and then was named “one of the most amazing photos of 2012” by Huffington Post.

Also planned are displays on ants and termites. Visitors can “get up close and personal” with the live specimens in the year-round “petting zoo.” They include Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas, including a rose-haired tarantula.

Weekend open houses are scheduled throughout the year at the Bohart Museum for visitors’ convenience. Future events are planned Saturday, Dec. 15, “Insects in Art”; Sunday, Jan. 13, “Extreme Insects”; Saturday, Feb. 2, “Biodiversity Museum Day”; Sunday, March 24, “Aquatic Insects”; Saturday, April 20, UCD Picnic Day; Saturday, May 11, “Moth-ers Day”; and Sunday, June 9, “How to Find Insects.”

For more information, visit bohart.ucdavis.edu or contact Heydon at slheydon@ucdavis.edu or (530) 752-0493.