Bug Squad

Bumble bee on bull thistle at Bodega Bay

Looking for a specific Blog post?

UC ANR is renovating its website. The Bug Squad blogs are archived at https://my.ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/archive.cfm

Meanwhile, here are the latest blogs. They can also be found on the Bug Squad blog, Facebook, at https://www.facebook.com/TheBugSquad

March 28, 2025: Congrats to Douglas Walsh, PBESA's Woodworth Award Recipient

March 27, 2025: In Support of Honey Bees

March 26, 2025: Remembering Professor Harry Lange and Helping the Bohart Museum of Entomology

March 25, 2025: Hammock, Morisseau to Give TEDX Talk at School of Medicine Research Celebration

March 24, 2025: A UC Davis Living Lab: Which Plants Are Best for Your Garden?

March 21, 2025: 'Fantastic' and Much Needed Workshop: Fruit Fly ID

March 19, 2025: Thinking Pink on the First Day of Spring

March 18, 2025: Dad's Bees

March 17, 2025: Don't Pinch Me! I'm Green

March 14, 2025: CC Edwards Elected Chair of Youth Professionals, American Mosquito Control Association

March 13, 2025: Bohart Scientists Explain Venomous vs. Poisonous

March 12 2025: A Beautiful Bombus at Bodega

March 11 2025: Learn How Two UC Davis Entomologists-Artists Fuse Art with Science

March 10, 2025: How to Color a Frog: the Boh-Art Way

March 7, 2025: Bohart Museum Open House: Hopping with Poison Dart Frogs

From left: Martin Müller, director of the Institute for Materials Physics at Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, and Christian Schroer, leading scientist of DESY's X-ray source PETRA III, accept a model of the newly identified ant from lead author Brendon Boudinot of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, and co-author Jörg Hammel, beamline scientist at the Hereon measurement station at PETRA III, where the research took place. (Photo courtesy of Marta Meyer, DESY)

Article

Zeroing in on 20-Million-Year-Old Ants, a New Genus

September 6th, 2022

What incredible research! It involves fossilized male ants, estimated to be about 20 million years and encased in Ethiopian amber.

Worker bees are aptly named. They comprise most of the bees in the colony and do most of the work. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Article

No Labor Day Holiday for Honey Bees

September 5th, 2022

On Labor Day, a federal holiday, we celebrate the our country's labor movement, our gratitude, and our achievements. But there is no Labor Day holiday for the worker bee, one of three castes (queen, worker and drone) in a honey bee colony. No Labor Day holiday for the queen, either.

A WSU-tagged monarch. (Photo by WSU entomologist David James)

Article

Monarch Migration Underway from Pacific Northwest

September 2nd, 2022

They're here and more are coming! Be on the lookout for migratory Monarch butterflies from the Pacific Northwest heading south to their overwintering sites along the California coast.

A monarch butterfly nectaring on a showy milkweed, Asclepias speciosa, in Vacaville, California in June, 2016. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Article

A Good News Day: Monarchs on the UC Davis Campus

September 1st, 2022

Butterfly guru Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, has been looking for monarchs all year long on the UC Davis campus--as have scores of others. On Friday, Aug. 26, he met with success. He spotted four within half an hour.

A monarch laying eggs in a Vacaville retail nursery on Sept. 4, 2019. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Article

That Milkweed You Buy at Retail Nurseries May Contain Pesticides

August 31st, 2022

It's Sept. 4, 2019. We notice a monarch butterfly laying eggs on milkweed in an enclosed Vacaville retail nursery. We purchase the plant and add it to our pollinator garden. Did the eggs ever hatch? Did we ever get caterpillars, chrysalids and adults? No. Zero. Zilch. Nada.