Nutrition & Health

Advice for the Home Gardener from the Help Desk of the UC Master Gardener Program of Contra Costa County Client's Request: How do I know when to pick the ripe apples off my backyard tree? Help Desk Response: Thank you for contacting the UC Master Gardener Help Desk.

Meet Wendy Mather, program manager of California Master Beekeeper Program (CAMBP) Bees are her passion, and her passion is bees.

You may have seen her sharing information about honey bees at the annual California Agriculture Day at the State Capitol, Sacramento.

Farmers work long hours under the open sky, struggling to finish each day's planting, cultivating, pruning or picking before the sun sets.

Northern California cooks are encouraged to enter their best quinoa recipes in a contest next month co-sponsored by the UC Cooperative Extension Master Food Preservers Program, reported Heather Shelton in the Eureka Times-Standard.

As a (relatively) new livestock and natural resources farm advisor, I'm fortunate to have known and worked with my predecessors (Roger Ingram in Placer-Nevada and Glenn Nader in Sutter-Yuba). I'm also fortunate to be working in a region where I've lived for most of my life.

Hear that buzz? Tomorrow (Saturday, Aug. 18) is National Honey Bee Day. A small group of beekeepers originated the observance back in 2009 to spotlight bees and beekeeping. They petitioned and obtained a proclamation from the U.S.

If you're like most of us, you go bananas for a banana for breakfast. It's healthy, nutritious and packed with potassium. But wait! You should probably go bananas for another fruit--that pear-shaped avocado. Did you know the avocado provides more potassium than a banana? It does.

Postdoctoral scholar Laura Brutscher of the Elina Lastro Nio lab, University of California, Davis, kneels by an educational beekeeping display: a beehive, a smoker, a hive tool and beekeeper protective gear.

Bee-hold, the eye of a bee-holder. When you have a "Bee Crossing" sign in your pollinator garden, odds are that bees will cross right in front of that sign. And it's not always a honey bee.