Rick Schubert is settling in to the part of bee season that didn’t exist when he opened Bee Happy Apiary with 300 hives in 1977. It’s mid-September, and at headquarters, tucked in the dusty hills off a private road in Vacaville, the faint humming of honey bees serves as background buzz to the voices of men.

Looking to boost Woodland’s downtown, streamline bus routes and combine transportation options, the community is evaluating a proposed $4.9 million transit center. The first step is figuring out just where to build the facility.

One thing became clear during the Metro Chamber’s 2014 Study Mission: Nashville’s business community is highly invested in educational opportunities and outcomes. The city’s education system has benefited by leveraging resources from the business community. The business community in turn benefits from workforce quality and retention, which is an ideal model for the Sacramento region to emulate.

Giving ex-offenders a better chance at reintegration is behind the California Fair Chance Act, which took effect in January. With exceptions for a few types of jobs, the new law forbids businesses with five or more employees from asking applicants about criminal history until late in the hiring process — which could mean big changes in how many employers hire.

California’s business climate is well-known for being unfriendly. CEO Magazine has rated California as the worst state in which to do business for more than eight years running.  Undoing Proposition 13’s provisions, as is currently being proposed, will make a big problem even worse by increasing taxes on the very businesses that create jobs and contribute to our economy.  

Apprentices offer a much-needed path to quality, high-paying careers.

Last summer, honey bee hives pollinating orchards in SoCal, from Fresno to Bakersfield, took a hard hit. Apiculturist Eric Mussen points to tank mixing formulas as the culprit behind what he estimates at over 80,0000 colonies lost. According to Mussen, chemicals often not thought to be harmful to bees can turn deadly when mixed.

The message popped into UC Berkeley sophomore Varsha Sarveshwar’s inbox a few days before the start of her Introduction to General Astronomy course in the fall of her freshman year. It contained the usual details about class times and textbooks. But then there was something surprising: a plea from the professor to skip the first day of class.

The sharing economy is a collaborative economic movement inspired by the efficiency of loaning and sharing existing resources on a fee-for-service model. It reduces environmental waste while supporting financial sustainability and building stronger communities, and it’s having a bigger impact than you might realize. 

In 2018, Golden Pacific Bank is an anomaly, one of the few remaining community banks in the Capital Region to emerge in the past 10 years and not be acquired by a larger entity.