Haagen-Dazs Brand Launches Bee-friendly Garden Design Competition at UC Davis
December 8, 2008
Honey bees will soon find a pollinator paradise
at the University of California, Davis, thanks to Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream.
Haagen-Dazs has announced that it is making a
$125,000 donation to the UC Davis Department of
Entomology to launch a nationwide design
competition to create a one-half acre Honey Bee
Haven garden at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey
Bee Research Facility at UC Davis.
From that gift, $65,000 will be used to
establish the garden. Häagen-Dazs and UC Davis
will determine how the balance of the gift can
best be used to benefit the health of honey bee populations.
"The Honey Bee Haven will be a pollinator
paradise," said Lynn Kimsey, chair of the
Department of Entomology and director of the
Bohart Museum of Entomology. "It will provide a
much needed, year-round food source for our bees
at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research
Facility. We anticipate it also will be a
gathering place to inform and educate the public
about bees. We are grateful to Haagen-Dazs for
its continued efforts to ensure bee health."
The garden will include a seasonal variety of
blooming plants that will provide a year-round
food source for honey bees. It is intended to be
a living laboratory supporting research into the
nutritional needs and natural feeding behaviors
of honey bees and other insect pollinators.
Visitors to the garden will be able to glean
ideas on how to establish their own bee-friendly
gardens and help to improve the nutrition of bees
in their own backyards. The bee haven is expected
to be the first in a series of pollinator gardens at UC Davis.
"The garden will be extremely helpful in
demonstrating that bees are not a nuisance in the
backyard, but instead are obtaining food and
water essential for their survival," said Eric
Mussen, a Cooperative Extension apiculturist in
the UC Davis Department of Entomology.
"Campus visitors will be able to see which
flowers are most attractive to foraging honey
bees and how to space the flowers in order to
have bees flying in the most convenient areas of their gardens," he added.
Garden design competition
The garden design competition funded by the
Haagen-Dazs brand is being coordinated by the
California Center for Urban Horticulture at UC
Davis. It is open to anyone who can create a
proposal by using basic landscape design principles.
"This is an excellent opportunity to raise public
awareness of the current plight of honey bees and
to educate the public on how they can help," said
Dave Fujino, director of the California Center
for Urban Horticulture. "Planting a garden with
honey bee friendly plants provides nutrition for
the bees and has the potential to create valuable
habitat corridors between agricultural sites."
Design submissions for the competition should
describe a one-half-acre garden that can be
installed for $65,000 or less. Submissions must
include a site plan, planting plan, maintenance
program and construction cost estimate.
The plans should include plant species that
provide forage for honey bees, a bee-accessible
water source, and environmentally friendly paths
for visitors. More design specifications and
lists of bee-appropriate plants can be found at
the UC Davis Department of Entomology Web site at
<http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/dept/beebio.cfm>http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/dept/beebio.cfm.
Design plans for the Honey Bee Haven garden must
be received at UC Davis by Jan. 30, 2009. Plans
should be mailed to the California Center for
Urban Horticulture, College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences Dean's Office, University
of California, One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616-8571.
The winning design, to be announced in February
2009, will be implemented, and the winning team
will receive on-site recognition on the
Haagen-Dazs commemorative plaque located within
the garden. In addition, the winner will receive
a free year's supply of Häagen-Dazs ice cream and
will be included in a 2009 press announcement.
More information on the design competition can be
obtained from Melissa Borel, program manager at
UC Davis' California Center for Urban
Horticulture, at (530) 752-6642 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Honey bee disappearance
Honey bees, which pollinate more than 100
different U.S. agricultural crops, valued at $15
billion, are dying from an unexplained phenomenon
known as "colony collapse disorder." First
identified three years ago, the disorder is
characterized by hive abandonment. The bees
disappear, often leaving behind the honey and the
immature bees, which die if not fed by the worker
bees. In recent years, the nation's beekeepers
have reported losing from one-third to all of their bees.
Bee experts suspect that a multitude of causes,
including pesticides, diseases, parasites,
stress, climate change and malnutrition, are
contributing to the dramatic decline in honey bee
populations. Seasonal food shortages lead to
malnutrition in the bees, making them more susceptible to diseases.
The Haagen-Dazs brand in February of this year
launched the "Haagen-Dazs Loves Honey Bees"
campaign. The company committed a combined
$250,000 donation for bee research to UC Davis
and Pennsylvania State University. It also formed
a seven-member scientific advisory board, created
an educational Web site at
<http://www.helpthehoneybees.com>http://www.helpthehoneybees.com
and introduced the new Vanilla Honey Bee ice cream flavor.
During the last several months, the public has
generously responded to the Haagen-Dazs brand's
call to action by donating more than $30,000 to
support honey bee research at UC Davis. In
addition, numerous companies have launched
programs that are donating a percentage of their
sales to support UC Davis honey bee research. For
example, Whole Foods Markets generated more than
$10,600 in direct and matching gifts through its in-store promotions.
Anyone interested in donating to UC Davis honey
bee research may obtain information at
<https://awc.ucdavis.edu/makeagift.aspx?alloccat=2000>https://awc.ucdavis.edu/makeagift.aspx?alloccat=2000.
