If You Cotton to Honey...

If you cotton to honey, you'll want to head over to Briggs Hall tomorrow (Saturday, April 17) during the 96th annual UC Davis Picnic Day.

You can sample cotton honey, as well as five other flavors, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty will be offering samples of these honeys: orange blossom, eucalyptus, raspberry, meadowfoam (a vernal-pool flower that is grown commercially in Oregon for oil), starthistle, and cotton.

You'll get six toothpicks, one for each container of honey. You'll taste the exquisite meadowfoam, the exotic raspberry,  and then what some folks say is the "best-of-the-best" honey--starthistle. Bees make this from an invasive, exotic weed that agriculturists hate.  Our tiny winged agricultural workers love it. 

And then you'll taste cotton. Hint: it's a light-colored variety of honey.

If you have a question about honey bees, including colony collapse disorder, ask away.

At Mussen's booth, you can also taste "Honey Lovers," the fruit chews that Gimbal's Fine Candies makes with real honey. Gimbal's, located in San Francisco, is donating 5 percent of the proceeds from the sale of Honey Lovers to UC Davis honey bee research.

These sweet treats at Briggs Hall are free. 

Here's what else the entomologists are planning at Briggs Hall and at the Bohart Museum of Entomology. 

You'll see racing cockroaches, termite trails, Maggot Art, kissing bugs, fleas, ticks, walnut twig beetles and the like, and you can take home some free ladybugs (lady beetles) from the statewide UC Integrated Pest Management Program.  

But it's the honey that makes UC Davis Picnic Day so sweet.