Honeybees will soon find a pollinator paradise at UC 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. Haagen-Dazs and UC Davis will determine how the balance of the gift can best be used to benefit the health of honeybee populations.

Sweet education

“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 honeybees. It is intended to be a living laboratory supporting research into the nutritional needs and natural feeding behaviors of honeybees 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 back yards. 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 back yard, but instead are obtaining food and water essential for their survival,” said Eric Mussen, a Cooperative Extension specialist in apicultuture.

“Campus visitors will be able to see which flowers are most attractive to foraging honeybees and how to space the flowers in order to have bees flying in the most convenient areas of their gardens,” he added.

The garden design competition funded by the Haagen-Dazs brand is being coordinated by the California Center for Urban Horticulture at UC Davis. The competion 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 honeybees 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 honeybee-friendly plants provides nutrition for the bees and has the potential to create valuable habitat corridors between agricultural sites.”

Design submissions should describe a one-half-acre garden that can be installed for $65,000 or less. Each entry must include a site plan, planting plan, maintenance program and construction cost estimate.

The plans should include plant species that provide forage for honeybees, 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 Department of Entomology Web site.

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, 1 Shields Ave., Davis 95616-8571.

The winning design, to be announced in February, will be implemented, and the winning team will receive on-site recognition on the Haagen-Dazs commemorative plaque in the garden. In addition, the winner will receive a free year’s supply of Haagen-Dazs ice cream and will be included in a 2009 news announcement.

More information on the design competition is available from Melissa Borel, program manager at the California Center for Urban Horticulture, (530) 752-6642 or mjborel.ucdavis.edu.

Honeybees, 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.” Identified three years ago, the disorder is characterized by hive abandonment. The bees disappear, often leaving behind the honey and 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.

Experts suspect that a multitude of causes, including pesticides, diseases, parasites, stress, climate change and malnutrition, are contributing to the dramatic decline in honeybee populations. Seasonal food shortages lead to malnutrition in the bees, making them more susceptible to diseases.

In February 2008, Haagen-Dazs 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 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 honeybee research at UC Davis. Anyone interested in donating to UC Davis honey bee research may obtain information here.