It's not just the honey bees that will be foraging in the half-acre Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis.

Scores of native bees and other insects will be there, too.

They already are.

A weekend visit to the haven, a bee friendly garden being developed next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, revealed assorted insects, including a dragonfly and a hover fly.

A sage attracted the dragonfly, a Variegated Meadowhawk (Sympetrum corrugatum, family Libellulidae), while a strawberry blossom drew the hover fly (Syrphidae, probably genus Paragus sp.).

The UC Davis Department of Entomology, chaired by Michael Parrella with vice chair Lynn Kimsey, is justifiably proud of this exciting new addition.

Emeritus professor and pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, who maintains an office in the Laidlaw facility, is monitoring the level of bee activity at the site. He began establishing baseline data (for bees only) in March.

For two sample days (March 20 and April 19) he found a total of 21 species of bees. As of this week, the number has now reached: 41.

The haven will be a year-around food source for bees and an educational experience for two-legged visitors, who will not only learn about honey bees and native bees but learn what to plant to attract them.

A public celebration of the haven is planned in the fall of 2010 when the haven will be bursting with blossoms. And next to the haven will be the Campus Buzzway, a wildflower garden filled with California poppies, lupine and coreopsis.

Don't know if silence is GOLDEN, but Italian honey bees definitely are.

Early morning Saturday, I watched a bee the color of liquid gold nectaring the lavender in our yard.

A golden opportunity to capture her brilliance. She won't live long. Field bees live only four to six weeks in the peak season, so in a few weeks she'll be gone. Others will take her place.

A click of the shutter and a moment preserved in time.

Meanwhile, work is progressing on the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee friendly garden situated next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, University of California, Davis.

By mid-October it will be finished and ready for golden moments--for the honey bees and the visitors. The haven will be a year-around food source for bees. Plus, it is expected to increase public awareness about the plight of bees AND help visitors glean ideas about what to plant in their own gardens.

Lavender is one of them. 

Honey bees love catmint as much as cats love catnip.

Fact is, catmint and catnip belong to the same family: the mint family or Lamiaceae. The family also includes such aromatic celebrities as peppermint, sage, thyme, lavender, basil and oregano.

So, when the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven opens Oct. 16 on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis campus, you'll see 13 catmint (Nepeta faassenii) plants sharing the garden with scores of other bee favorites.

The Baxter House is no more.

The UC Davis Fire Department burned it down yesterday.

It's gone, along with assorted black widow spiders, scattered crane flies, munchkin termites and maybe a meandering ant or wandering fly or two. (After all, this is a "bug" blog.)

The Baxter House, built in May 1938, was an abandoned, rundown house on Bee Biology Road, on the west end of the UC Davis campus. It stood east of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, the only other building on Bee Biology Road.

Once a private residence and then an avian lab research facility, the 1200-square-foot building went up in flames and down in embers.

Just like that.

In its place will be an access road to the Haagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee friendly garden to be installed later this year next to the Laidlaw facility.

The Baxter House was not only a troubling eyesore but a massive road bump in the UC Davis Department of Entomology's development plans.

Some 15 firefighters, including trainees in the UC Davis student residential firefighter program, participated in the training exercise, led by assistant chief Nathan Trauernicht, operations and training division.

The eyesore is gone. Bring on the bees and the honey bee haven.

A field of dreams, for a honey bee, almost certainly would be a field of lavender.

Call it what you want, but if a bee could talk, it would probably be "lovely lavender."

When UC Cooperative Extension Apiculturist Eric Mussen, member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty, guided a group of scientists from Ho Chi Minh City to commercial bee operations in the Central Valley, one of the stops was to Ann Beekman's lavender fields in Hughson, Stanislaus County.

Ann Beekman of Beekman and Beekman (beekeepers) grows lavender and keeps bees to produce honey, mead soaps and candles. She's featured in the UC Davis Small Farm Center’s book, Outstanding in Their Fields: California’s Women Farmers, which celebrates the achievements of 17 women farmers and ranchers. 

Visiting the lavender fields is on my "honey-do" list, but presently, I'll have to be content capturing images of honey bees nectaring the lavender in our bee friendly garden.

And I'm eagerly awaiting the opening of the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee friendly garden near the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis. A group of Sausalito residents submitted the winning design, which will  be implemented this year. A public dedication is tentatively scheduled in October.

The honey bees will surely be as happy as we bee lovers. We all love lavender.