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Finishing up vineyard cover crop work with a new look at old data comparing native grasses to seeded 'insectary mix'. Interesting find - native grasses help with water conservation (deep roots); paper's in Journal of Applied Ecology doi.org/10.1111/1365-2…

Six of the 10 warmest Julys in Fresno have happened since 2003. Right now, the average temperature this month is 86.8. Might crack the top 10 again this year.

Congratulations to Rohith Vulchi - who is completing his Masters at CSU Fresno (thesis defense photo) and starting a PhD at Texas A&M (L-R) Maggie Ellis, Davide Scaccini, Jacob Wenger, Kent Daane, Rohith, Sunny Yang, May Yang

Sunny Yang from the lab helping at Fresno Hmong New Year with UCCE Cooperative Extension Michael Yang and Ruth Dahlquist-Willard, showing old and young farmers insect pests and their natural enemies to discuss how to farm with fewer pesticides.

Several new fire in California today. The #CreekFire in Fresno County. #ValleyFire in San Diego County. #ElDoradoFire in San Bernardino County. Lots of smoke seen on satellite.

Check out the Annual Review article on Sustainable Vineyard Management with Charles Vincent, Rufus @msuberrybugs, and Claudio Ioriatti. via the one-time download (authors' access) via the following e-print URL: annualreviews.org/eprint/DPUhw4v…

Bees in vineyards? Houston Wilson entomology.ucr.edu/faculty/housto… UCR Entomology led a nice study of cover crops impact on ecosystem services in vineyards and showed some increases in bees, even though vines aren't bee-pollinated. Fin it on his Research Gate: researchgate.net/profile/Housto…

How warm has California been? Feb 7th, temps at 75 F, and I saw my first stone fruit orchard in bloom - with honey bees all over and no managed hives in sight. How early can bloom be? Will a frost or rain storm impact the fruit set (if we return to normal winter temperatures)?

ESA (bug-folks) Entomological Society of America meetings now as much about seeing friends; at Denver mting, caught up with Rhonda Hamm linkedin.com/in/ronda-hamm who was in the UC Kearney lab (1999-2000), from CSU Fresno to Cornell (PhD), now doing great things w/ DOW (Global Academic Relations)

Another sign of the 'new' 2017-2018 drought - stone fruit being irrigated in February because we've had so little rain in California's San Joaquin Valley (and very little snow pack in the Sierra's to our east accuweather.com/en/weather-blo…

Hannah @NCSmallFruitIPM & Lauren Dr. Lauren Diepenbrock🐞👩‍🔬 hosted spotted wing drosophila bio-control webinar available at NCSU website swdmanagement.org. Speakers included Heather at MSU @msuberrybugs, Kim Hoelmer (USDA). Let me know if you want any Ganaspis / Leptopilina photos.

UC Berkeley ranked as top (#1) University for Environmental Sciences topuniversities.com/university-ran… over Stanford (#2), MIT (#3), Harvard (#4) and Oxford (#5)

Almond growers need millions of bees for a few weeks and then want no bees after bloom because of pesticides used for pests. Current solution - bring bees in, while researchers are looking at native bees, self pollinating almonds are being used and so one solution may be no bees

Continuing on almond bloom - its been a tough year with a very warm start to February bringing on early-fast bloom, then freezing cold (photo of farmer running water), and now rain. Check out early 2018 prediction thealmonddoctor.com/2018/02/07/201… vs. this week agalert.com/story/?id=11646.

One more bee comment-near Sanger, CA noticed one side of road had bee hives to pollinate almonds and the other side netting to keep bees off self-pollinating mandarins (bees cross pollinate resulting in seeds) - hived honey bees are more an ag-tool than an ecosystem service

A global team looked at invasive mealybug "Planococcus ficus" in North America. Summarized in PLoS One doi.org/10.1371/journa…, molecular snooping suggests Mid-East origins of invasive Pf in Calif and Mexico. Use 'certified' nursery plant material, don't suitcase-carry plants!

“I’ve been through a few waves of invasive species, and this is far and away the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.” nyti.ms/2KNq9Oz