Pollination

I've grown accustomed to the bugs that flit around my desk at home while I write. They're the buddies of my office mate, a puppy who naps straddling the doggy door, with his head propping open the plastic flap to outside. That's an open invitation to insects sweltering in our Valley backyard. Rio spends entire afternoons chasing down the flies that venture inside. But Rio didn't know what to make of the buzzing that greeted us on the hottest afternoon of the year last week.

This being Utah, the self-proclaimed Beehive State, Darren Cox is an expert in -- what else -- bees. Civic fathers use the term for the population's strong work ethic, but Cox deals with the stinging, honey-producing real McCoy. Now the fourth-generation bee farmer is trying to use his recognition as this year's national beekeeper of the year to focus attention on a major threat to the industry: colony collapse disorder. Cox, 48, who lives in Logan but has 5,000 hives in Utah, California's Central Valley and Wyoming, received the award from the American Honey Producers Assn.

A tiny bee may help save New Zealand's unusual exploding mistletoe by replacing the now-rare birds that used to be the only creatures that could pollinate it, scientists report in the Dec. 19 Nature. The lightweight bees have learned how to wrestle open the flowers of the mistletoe, which cannot open by themselves.

The plight of bees is headed to a courtroom. A coalition of beekeepers, environmentalists and consumer groups filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency this week, contending the agency has not done enough to protect bees from pesticides, which they say are linked to the increasing bee-colony collapse problem. The suit, filed by the Center for Food Safety, says the class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids are improperly regulated. The group calls for halting the use of the  pesticide until more is known about the effects on bees and other pollinators.

SACRAMENTO — California is heading for a record almond harvest this fall. A combination of nearly ideal weather and millions of healthy, robust honeybees pollinating almond blossoms is expected to yield 2.1 billion pounds of nuts, the biggest crop in history. The harvest starts in late August in the San Joaquin Valley and continues through October in the Sacramento Valley. The U.S. Department of Agriculture pegs it as 5% above a May forecast and 3% above 2011's record of 2 billion pounds.

Third-generation beekeeper Roscoe Hall spent the last year fretting over a disease that has inexplicably caused thousands of his industrious insects to abandon their colonies. Now entire hives are disappearing too. In the long, flat valley where the nation's almonds grow, bee thieves are striking hard, nabbing increasingly valuable hives from farmers' fields where bees are used to pollinate blossoming nut trees. A few weeks ago, 180 of Hall's hives were lifted over a period of days, a bit of banditry he estimates cost him nearly $70,000 in lost bees, pollination fees and honey production.

This being Utah, the self-proclaimed Beehive State, Darren Cox is an expert in -- what else -- bees. Civic fathers use the term for the population's strong work ethic, but Cox deals with the stinging, honey-producing real McCoy. Now the fourth-generation bee farmer is trying to use his recognition as this year's national beekeeper of the year to focus attention on a major threat to the industry: colony collapse disorder. Cox, 48, who lives in Logan but has 5,000 hives in Utah, California's Central Valley and Wyoming, received the award from the American Honey Producers Assn.

Harvard University researchers have discovered the remains of an extinct bee, perfectly preserved in amber, with a load of orchid pollen on its back -- some of the only direct evidence of pollination in the fossil record. The find, reported Thursday in the journal Nature, indicates that orchids arose 76 million to 84 million years ago, much earlier than most scientists had believed.

Male cycads, a plant group including firs and pines, actively participate in pollination by insects, researchers reported Friday in the journal Science. The cycads produce cones that open and emit a fragrance that attracts insects called thrips, which enter the cones and become covered with pollen. Then the male cycads heat up -- raising their temperature as much as 25 degrees -- and drive the thrips out.

The apple blossoms used to shake and shiver every spring. A loud, insistent buzz thrummed in Bob Barthel's ears when he was a boy, climbing in his father's orchard. He worried in those days about getting stung by the throngs of wild honeybees jostling for nectar in the flowers. Now that he is 39 and managing the farm, Barthel has sharply different concerns. The apple trees were still and silent this year, but he is far from pleased. Growing season has begun.

Farmers who have watched helplessly as a mysterious disease wiped out millions of domesticated bees needed to pollinate their almonds, apples and other crops may have an easy solution: make their crops more accessible to wild insects that do the job for free. Not only are they cheaper, they fertilize blossoms with much greater efficiency, new research shows. After observing bees in hundreds of fields on multiple continents, scientists calculated that free-living bees were twice as effective as domesticated honeybees at prompting flowers to produce fruit.

SACRAMENTO — California is heading for a record almond harvest this fall. A combination of nearly ideal weather and millions of healthy, robust honeybees pollinating almond blossoms is expected to yield 2.1 billion pounds of nuts, the biggest crop in history. The harvest starts in late August in the San Joaquin Valley and continues through October in the Sacramento Valley. The U.S. Department of Agriculture pegs it as 5% above a May forecast and 3% above 2011's record of 2 billion pounds.

Studying amber obtained from Cretaceous-era deposits, an international team of paleontologists have discovered the oldest known insects engaged in pollination. The 105-million to 110-million-year-old thrips they found are coated in pollen grains that were presumably used to feed the insects' offspring. Thysanopterans, commonly called thrips, are tiny, slender insects with fringed wings -- hence the name, from the Greek thysanos (fringed) and pteron (wing). Thrips are generally considered pests because they eat plant tissues, but some are efficient pollinators for several species of flowering plants.

I've grown accustomed to the bugs that flit around my desk at home while I write. They're the buddies of my office mate, a puppy who naps straddling the doggy door, with his head propping open the plastic flap to outside. That's an open invitation to insects sweltering in our Valley backyard. Rio spends entire afternoons chasing down the flies that venture inside. But Rio didn't know what to make of the buzzing that greeted us on the hottest afternoon of the year last week.

There goes a great Bullet, er, Wizard. Even if the whole world abandoned Gilbert Arenas, who had the misfortune to become perfectly inconvenient and vulnerable at the same time, there was one man who would have remembered all he meant to the Washington Wizards and the "legacy of Abe Pollin" the late owner's family keeps talking about. That man, of course, was Abe Pollin. If Pollin was different, it wasn't for being wildly successful as an NBA owner, because he wasn't.

There was no way that last shot could go in. No way the Washington Wizards could lose their first game without the only owner the franchise had known through 46 seasons. Louis Williams' three-pointer at the buzzer rimmed out, giving the Wizards an emotional 108-107 win over the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday night, hours after the death of owner Abe Pollin. "I guess Mr. P, he probably contested that last shot better than anybody," Wizards Coach Flip Saunders said. Down the hall, the opposing coach -- who worked for Pollin until last season -- uttered the same thought.

America's woodlands will soon be carpeted with delicate bunchberry dogwood flowers -- or maybe not so delicate. A team of scientists has reported that the blossoms explode open in less than 0.5 milliseconds and with 800 times the acceleration experienced by astronauts -- the fastest plant movement on record, making the snap of a Venus' flytrap appear glacial by comparison. Joan Edwards, professor of biology at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass.

In the heart of the Wilshire Park historic district, Horacio Fuentes has built a garden with the feel of his native El Salvador. It begins by the sidewalk, where a pito coral tree grows, planted 15 years ago. It hasn't yet produced the dramatic red flowers that, when eaten, are said to prompt a deep sleep with intense, erotic dreams. Maybe it's too cold here, Fuentes said. He's had more success with his papayas. The plants are scattered around the frontyard, low enough to harvest, each with a cluster of ripening fruit pushing out from the main trunk.

Somehow during the hot, long days of summer, our native flora punctuates the dry season with flashes of color. Horticulturists speculate that the reason is sex. Plants such as our native mallows, buckwheats, bush marigolds and hoary fuchsias manage their August shows of pink, yellow and oranges as a survival strategy. Undistracted by spring lilacs, pollinators such as hummingbirds and bees tend exclusively to them. Late blooms also allow these plants to drop their seeds closer to the arrival of autumn rains.

Third-generation beekeeper Roscoe Hall spent the last year fretting over a disease that has inexplicably caused thousands of his industrious insects to abandon their colonies. Now entire hives are disappearing too. In the long, flat valley where the nation's almonds grow, bee thieves are striking hard, nabbing increasingly valuable hives from farmers' fields where bees are used to pollinate blossoming nut trees. A few weeks ago, 180 of Hall's hives were lifted over a period of days, a bit of banditry he estimates cost him nearly $70,000 in lost bees, pollination fees and honey production.