New Year's Day is not only the beginning of a year, but it's also the beginning of two UC Davis insect contests: one involving a cabbage white butterfly, and the other, a bumble bee.
Chances are no one won either one today, as it's been raining almost non-stop, and the 10-day forecast predicts an 80 percent chance of rain. The temperature isn't cooperating, either.
Here's a recap:
Beer-for-a-Butterfly Contest
For the annual “Beer for a Butterfly” contest, launched in 1972 by butterfly guru Art Shapiro, now a UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus, the first person to collect the first live cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, of the year in the three-county area of Sacramento, Yolo and Solano--and is declared the winner---will receive a pitcher of beer or its equivalent.
Shapiro, who has monitored butterfly populations in Central California since 1972, and maintains a research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/ , says the point of the contest "is to get the earliest possible flight date for statistical purposes.” It's all part of his scientific research involving long-term studies of butterfly life cycles and climate change.
The professor also participates in the contest. In fact, Shapiro has been defeated only four times and those were by UC Davis graduate students.
The 2025 winner: Professor Shapiro, who collected the butterfly at 12:13 p.m., Jan. 23 in West Sacramento, Yolo County. One favorite spot: abandoned lots or fields where weedy mustard grows.
If you net a cabbage white butterfly in the wild, contact theochila@gmail.com or amshapiro@ucdavis.edu for more information.
Robbin Thorp Memorial First-Bumble Bee-of-the-Year Contest
For the sixth annual Robbin Thorp Memorial First-Bumble Bee-of-the-Year Contest, the contest involves photographing or filming a bumble bee in the two-county area of Solano and Yolo, and sending the image to the Bohart Museum of Entomology at bmuseum@ucdavis.edu. The first person to submit the earliest one--and is judged the winner--will receive bragging rights and a coffee cup designed with the endangered Franklin's bumble bee, the bee that Thorp monitored on the California-Oregon border for decades.
The entries must include the time, date and place. The image must be recognizable as a bumble bee.
The contest, launched in 2021, memorializes Professor Thorp (1933-2019), a global authority on bees and a UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology, who died June 7, 2019 at age 85. A 30-year member of the UC Davis faculty, he retired in 1994 but continued working until several weeks before his death. Every year he looked forward to seeing the first bumble bee in the area.
The earliest bumble bees to emerge in this area are (1) the black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, which forages on manzanitas, wild lilacs, wild buckwheats, lupines, penstemons, clovers, lavender and sages, among others and (2) the yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, which has been spotted foraging on the same flowers.
The 2025 winning team: Michael Kwong of Sacramento and Kaylen Teves of Vallejo, Monarch Watch volunteers who photographed a yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) on an oak leaf at the Glen Cove Marina, Vallejo on Jan. 11 while they were looking for monarchs. At the time, Teves was a computer science student at San Francisco State University, and Kwong, a senior environmental scientist with the State of California.
One favorite public spot of the bumble bee contestants is the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden.
Cover image: Cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, in flight. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)