By Ken Christensen

Honeybees need a healthy diet of pollen, nectar and water. But at a bee laboratory in eastern Washington state, Steve Sheppard fills their feeding tubes with murky brown liquid from the forest.

His bees are getting a healthy dose of mushroom juice.

“If this does what we hope, it will be truly revolutionary,” says Sheppard, who heads the Department of Entomology at Washington State University. “Beekeepers are running out of options.”

Commercial honeybees, which pollinate $15 billion worth of crops in the United States annually, have teetered on the brink of collapse for nearly a decade. A third of all bee colonies have died each year since 2006, on average, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Scientists say the mysterious phenomenon, known as colony collapse disorder, may be the result of at least 60 environmental factors that combine to cripple honeybees — including pesticides, disease, malnutrition, loss of habitat and climate change.

Beekeepers, however, say the honeybee’s single greatest threat is a virus-carrying parasite called the varroa mite.

Sheppard has spent decades breeding western honeybees to better tolerate the mite and its viruses. But he hasn’t had much success, he says.

Varroa mites have devastated U.S. beehives since the late 1980s, when they arrived here from Asia. In 1996, half of the colonies east of the Mississippi River died due to mite infestations.

The reddish-brown pests, which are no bigger than the head of a pin, invade colonies and multiply rapidly. They hide among bee larvae developing in the honeycomb, feed on infant bee blood and lay several eggs each.

“It would be like having something the size of a pancake feeding on you,” Sheppard says.

Honeybees that emerge from the infected hives typically carry illnesses, like a virus that results in deformed wings that prevent bees from flying.

If beekeepers don’t intervene, the varroa mite can destroy a colony in less than two years. Meanwhile, the pest reproduces so rapidly, it builds resistance to chemical pesticides more quickly than solutions can be invented, Sheppard says.

That’s why he decided to try an unconventional approach last year, after local mushroom expert Paul Stamets called him with an idea to help arm the honeybee in its fight against the mite.

“We’ve gone to the moon, we’ve gone to Mars, but we don’t know the way of the bee?” says Stamets, who owns the medicinal mushroom company Fungi Perfecti near Olympia, Wash.

The self-taught mycologist says he noticed a relationship between honeybees and mushrooms when he observed bees sipping on sugar-rich fungal roots growing in his backyard.

“I looked down, and they were sucking on my mycelium,” he says.

Now he thinks he knows why.

In recent years, his research has shown that rare fungi found in the old-growth forests of western Washington can help fight other viruses and diseases, including tuberculosis, smallpox and bird flu. He wondered if the honeybee would see similar health benefits from wood-rotting mushrooms.

“Bees have immune systems, just like we do,” he says. “These mushrooms are like miniature pharmaceutical factories.”

Stamets and Sheppard are feeding liquid extracts of those forest mushrooms to mite-infected honeybees. Initial findings suggest that five species of the wood-rotting fungi can reduce the honeybees’ viruses and increase their lifespans.

In addition, the scientists are trying to fight honeybee viruses by taking aim at the varroa mite itself. Insect-killing fungi have been used as an alternative to synthetic chemical pesticides for years, and previous studies show that one type of entomopathogenic fungus can weaken varroa mites in beehives.

Paul Stamets thinks his version of the fungus will be more effective. So far, the results of the experiments in Sheppard’s lab look promising.

“The product seems to be killing mites without harming bees,” Sheppard says.

This fall, the scientists plan to expand both experiments by partnering with commercial beekeepers like Eric Olson, who runs the largest commercial beekeeping operation in Washington.

Olson says two-thirds of his beehives died five years ago because of a varroa mite infestation. After several years successfully controlling the pest, he arrived this year in California for almond pollination season and nearly half of his bees had died during the winter.

He spent $770,000 to buy replacement hives, he says.

“I was lucky that I had the cash and the connections to recover from that,” he says.

Olson recently donated about $50,000 to Sheppard’s department to help find a solution to the mite. Looking at the bees in one of his hives, he says, “I’m really concerned about whether these little girls will survive.”

Link to story

By Bob Johnson

Hundreds of farmers around the state are upgrading their irrigation systems with the financial support of a California Department of Food and Agriculture grant program for projects that improve water and energy efficiency, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

CDFA awarded $10 million in 2014 to help more than 130 growers improve their irrigation through the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program, and announced an additional 100 projects for 2015 awards last week.

One of the 2014 awards helped finance a weather station at Rio Viente Vineyards near the Sacramento River in Walnut Creek.

“That provides the Et data,” said Jamie Reamer, who oversees irrigation at the family vineyard, as she pointed toward the weather station. “Every Wednesday, I look at the Et for the previous week and talk to the viticulturist.”

While the weather station provides evapotranspiration data, sensors buried in the ground at each block radio back soil moisture data for every four inches to a depth of four feet.

The combination of the two sorts of information lets Reamer devise a precise irrigation program, and monitor whether there are problems that need to be addressed.

“The Et tells me how much water to apply, and the soil sensors tell me how to apply it,” she said. “What I’ve learned with the sensors is every block has its own story. One block has infiltration problems, where the water goes down to a foot and stops; this lets me try different solutions and see how they’re working. Another block hits peat at 20 inches, and I know not to run long sets. It’s learning to apply water in sets of duration that make sense.”

The combination of instruments and transmitters makes information easily on hand every day that would otherwise only be available through considerable effort at each vineyard block.

“You can auger the ground, but you’re not going to auger every day,” Reamer said. “I can sit at my desk 22 miles away and decide how long to run the water. The in-line pressure sensors tell me if the blocks are irrigating properly or if there is a problem in the line.”

CDFA has helped other farmers install equipment that gives them more precise information to guide irrigation decisions.

Daniel Jackson installed a system to monitor soil moisture through sensors with electronic data output and flow meters to ensure efficient irrigation scheduling at his Family Tree Farms in Tulare County.

Four Oaks Farming in San Benito County installed equipment to test soil moisture levels, and onsite weather and CIMIS requirements to improve irrigation efficiency of its organic walnut orchard.

And Six K’s Orchards in Butte County converted from flood irrigation to efficient micro-jet irrigation with solar panels to run the water pump.

The awards, made available through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the proceeds of California’s greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program, are for a maximum of $150,000 per project.

“We have money to give out to save water and reduce greenhouse gases,” said Amrith Gunasekara, CDFA science advisor. “It uses greenhouse gas reduction funds.”

Funds have been awarded to highly established firms and beginning farmers, for highly sophisticated technical improvements and for relatively simple water storage projects.

At the 4,200-acre Scheid Vineyards outside Greenfield, SWEEP funds helped finance irrigation and fertilizer automation equipment, soil and microclimate monitoring equipment, and a variable-frequency drive for pumping efficiency improvements.

SWEEP funds last year also helped a complex of small farms just outside Davis put real-time moisture sensors in the ground for four crops, retrofit automatic irrigation on two pumps, install a gray water system to irrigate existing blackberry fields and a vegetable plot, and install solar panels to replace a three-horsepower gasoline-powered pump.

“The panels power one of the pumps that irrigate vegetables, melons and blackberries,” said Emma Torbert, one of the principals at the Cloverleaf Farm tree fruit orchard.

In addition to buying hardware, the SWEEP grant funds also pay off by encouraging farmers to devote their precious management time to learning as much as possible about irrigation and energy efficiency.

“One of the good things about the grant was having all of us farmers brainstorm about ways to save water and energy,” Torbert said. “We thought of ways to save water that didn’t cost anything.”

One of the rows at the Cloverleaf orchard, for example, was left without weed-suppressing mulch as an experiment in how much water the mulch saves.

The sophisticated moisture sensors and weather station at the Rio Viente Vineyard have also set in motion a learning process.

“I’m using Et, and that’s the most important thing, but I’m still learning,” Reamer said. “One of the things I’m working on is calibrating the point where we have the sensors to the rest of the block.”

Link to Ag Alert

The next segment in the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, is “Growing Together,” a profile of closely-knit farmers flourishing in the Central Valley.

California’s dairy farmers have joined together with the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory at UC Davis–a joint venture with CDFA–to fund research through the California Dairy Research Foundation that has brought a much more rapid detection system for foot-and-mouth disease. The Foundation is funded largely by the California Milk Advisory Board, a marketing agreement overseen by CDFA and supported by assessments of the dairy industry.

Folsom Lake

By Dale Kasler and Phillip Reese

El Niño might put a dent in the drought after all.

In a revised forecast Thursday, the National Weather Service said Northern California stands a decent chance of getting significant precipitation from this winter’s El Niño weather pattern, a development that could help ease the state’s four-year drought.

Until now, forecasters have been saying this winter likely would bring heavy rains to Southern California, which is typical for El Niño, but they’ve been less certain about the outlook for the northern half of the state. Because the state’s major reservoirs are in the north, that’s where the rain and snow need to fall to substantially bolster the state’s water supplies.

Michelle Mead, a forecaster in the agency’s Sacramento office, said Sacramento and the Sacramento Valley have at least an 80 percent chance of seeing average precipitation this winter. The chance of above-average precipitation has been pegged at 34 percent to 40 percent, she said.

“Not that it will be a deluge and everybody needs to stop conserving water,” she said. The bulk of the precipitation will fall in December, January and February, she said.

William Patzert, a climate expert at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, was less circumspect, saying he’s convinced El Niño will be felt in Northern California. “At this point – at this particular time – this is too large too fail,” he said. “People like to be conservative. They don’t want to stick their neck out. But this is definitely the real deal.”

If history is a guide, California will see big snow in the northern mountains along with rain in the south, Patzert said. “The last two El Niños that were of this magnitude hosed all of California,” he said. “If you look at the snowpack for those two El Niños, you had double the snowpack, too.”

What’s changed since the weather service’s previous forecasts? Mead said analysts took a fresh look at previous winters and concluded that strong El Niños tend to bring heavy rains in the north. Other forecasters noted the persistence of this year’s El Niño and said temperature anomalies in the South Pacific are favorable to Northern California’s rain outlook.

“Moderate El Niños tend to get Southern California wet, and the strong ones get all of California wet,” said Jeffrey Mount, a water specialist at the Public Policy Institute of California. Mount said he’s encouraged that the so-called “ridiculously resilient ridge,” the high-pressure system that kept rain and snow from falling on California, is breaking down.

But Mount and Jay Lund, an engineer and watershed specialist at UC Davis, noted that the relative scarcity of strong El Niños – just six since 1957 – means it’s difficult to get too comfortable with the latest forecast.

“We have a small sample size,” Lund said. “There’s still a substantial probability that we’re going to be in a drought next year.”

State climatologist Michael Anderson, who has urged caution as El Niño fever has risen in the last few months, said he, too, thinks there’s a better chance of significant precipitation in Northern California. “As we get closer, we are seeing trajectories move in a more favorable outcome,” he said.

Anderson nonetheless encouraged Sacramento residents to continue to conserve water. He and others noted that the drought is so severe that even a huge rainfall year will not fully erase its effects. Plus, he said, “We want to wait until we actually see it.”

Mead said Sacramento received 13.8 inches of rain last winter, about 68 percent of average.

El Niño is a phenomenon linked to above-average water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. Mead said the temperature is expected to peak at 2.5 degrees Celsius above normal this winter, ranking this among the strongest El Niños on record.

The latest forecast put the chance of El Niño striking at 95 percent, the same as a month ago.

Link to story

California celebrates National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day today on the cusp of a transportation revolution that will lead to cleaner air and fewer greenhouse gas emissions as more drivers turn to zero-emission vehicles.

The U.S. Senate has declared Thursday, Oct. 8, 2015, National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day, referencing hydrogen’s standard atomic weight of 1.008 and in recognition that hydrogen is an abundant source of fuel, as well as cleaner and more efficient than petroleum.

California is a leader in developing and deploying hydrogen fuel cells for passenger vehicles, industrial vehicles and backup power for cell phone towers.

“California has long supported hydrogen and fuel cells as a vital zero-emission technology,” California Air Resources Board (ARB) Chair Mary D. Nichols said. “Transit customers in the Bay Area and Coachella Valley have enjoyed clean, quiet and powerful hydrogen fuel cell electric buses for years. California companies operate more efficiently by using hydrogen fuel cell electric forklifts in warehouses. Marking the first National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day in 2015 is particularly appropriate as auto companies begin selling consumer fuel cell electric vehicles to Californians.”

The California Energy Commission has provided funding for 49 retail hydrogen refueling stations anticipated to open over the next two years.

“Hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles are an important part of the portfolio of technologies and fuels the State is pursuing to address our ambitious climate and air quality goals,” said Janea A. Scott, the lead commissioner for transportation at the Energy Commission. “Through an Energy Commission program, the State is investing in an initial network of up to 100 hydrogen stations to provide the needed fueling infrastructure to support fuel-cell electric vehicles.”

California’s investments in alternative fuel vehicles, like hydrogen fuel cell electric cars, are fueling the state’s economy and leading to cleaner air.

“Hydrogen and fuel cells are poised to play a significant role in California’s economic growth well into the future,” said Panorea Avdis, chief deputy director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GOBiz). “Together, hydrogen and fuel cells demonstrate that improving our environment is good for business.”

GOBiz provides vital assistance in the hydrogen fueling station permit process and helps station developers locate and expand in California.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Division of Measurement Standards (CDFA DMS) evaluates and tests new hydrogen dispensers for suitability and accuracy, enabling retail stations to sell fuel to customers.  CDFA DMS is also the agency responsible for providing fuel quality sampling and laboratory analysis, which ensures the best possible vehicle performance.

“Instituting early marketplace oversight of hydrogen sold at retail will be a key component to successful consumer acceptance of this fuel,” said Kristin Macey, director of CDFA DMS.

The ARB partners with transit agencies to advance the adoption of hydrogen fuel cell electric buses. AC Transit operates 12 fuel cell electric buses in the San Francisco East Bay Area, and SunLine Transit operates four fuel cell electric buses in the Coachella Valley. Fuel cell electric buses are poised to enter the commercial market in California with larger pilot projects that may compete for funding under the ARB’s Low Carbon Transportation Program.

The ARB and the Energy Commission are founding members of the California Fuel Cell Partnership, a public-private collaboration committed to promoting fuel cell electric vehicle commercialization. The State also participates in H2USA, a public-private partnership to promote the commercial introduction and widespread adoption of hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles across America. California participates in H2FIRST, an initiative of U.S. Department of Energy’s Fuel Cell Technologies Office within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Sandia National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, to support customer-friendly fueling stations and advance hydrogen fueling technology for a commercial market.

About the California Energy Commission

The California Energy Commission is the state’s primary energy policy and planning agency. The agency was established by the California Legislature through the Warren-Alquist Act in 1974. It has seven core responsibilities: advancing state energy policy, encouraging energy efficiency, certifying thermal power plants, investing in energy innovation, developing renewable energy, transforming transportation, and preparing for energy emergencies.

About the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz)

GO-Biz was created by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. to serve as California’s single point of contact for economic development and job creation efforts. GO-Biz offers a range of services to business owners including: attraction, retention and expansion services, site selection, permit streamlining, clearing of regulatory hurdles, small business assistance, international trade development, assistance with state government, and much more.

About the Air Resources Board

ARB’s mission is to promote and protect public health, welfare, and ecological resources through effective reduction of air pollutants while recognizing and considering effects on the economy. The ARB oversees all air pollution control efforts in California to attain and maintain health based air quality standards.

About the California Department of Food and Agriculture

The California Department of Food and Agriculture promotes and protects California’s food supply and environment, and it ensures fair and accurate commerce through oversight by its Division of Measurement Standards. California’s $54 billion agriculture industry leads the nation, providing nearly half of US-grown fruits, nuts and vegetables, and about 20 percent of its dairy products.   

Link to news release at California Energy Commission

The USDA has released a series of fact sheets illustrating how the newly reached Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement can boost the U.S. agriculture industry, supporting more American jobs and driving the nation’s rural economy. Created by the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), the fact sheets graphically depict how each state and individual commodities stand to benefit from increased agricultural trade with the 11 other TPP countries.

Trade ministers from Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam concluded TPP negotiations on Oct. 5 in Atlanta, Ga. Trade with these countries accounted for 42 percent of U.S. agricultural exports in 2014, contributing $63 billion to the U.S. economy.

Here is the fact sheet for California.

This is a reprise post from our Growing California video series. Apple Hill is now open for its annual fall run in El Dorado County.