Bug Squad

Bumble bee on bull thistle at Bodega Bay

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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

Color them orange: A California golden poppy and a monarch butterfly in a Vacaville garden. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Article

Monarchs and California Golden Poppies: Color Them Orange

March 28th, 2024

Monarchs and California golden poppies...Color them orange...Color them bold...Color them beautiful... And color them natives...

The lagoon fly is a syrphid fly, Eristalinus aeneus. This one is foraging on Virginia stock (Malcolmia maritima), in a Vacaville garden. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey).

Article

Lagoon Fly: Seeing Spots

March 27th, 2024

Ever seen a lagoon fly? It's a syrphid fly, Eristalinus aeneus, distinguished by small black spots patterning its eyes. Syrphids, also known hoverflies or flower flies, hover over a flower before foraging. They're pollinators.

An egg case or ootheca of a praying mantis. Mama, a Stagmomantis limbata, deposited it on a redbud tree.(Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Article

Ootheca! Ootheca! Ootheca!

March 26th, 2024

If you've been pruning bushes or trees, check to see if a praying mantis egg case (ootheca) is attached to a limb. If you do, you're in luck! A mantis deposits her egg case in late summer or fall, and usually on twigs, stems, a wooden stake or fence slat, but sometimes even on a clothespin.

A fruit fly, Neotephritis finalis, peers up at a gray hairstreak butterfly, Strymon melinus, in a bed of Coreopsis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Article

Presenting: A Butterfly and a Fly

March 25th, 2024

A gray butterfly and a fruit fly... Each has "fly" in its name but one is a member of the order Lepidoptera and the other, order Diptera. Etymology does not agree with entomology.

A National Geographic Facebook image shows a hover fly masquerading as a bee.

Article

Today's Honorary Bee Image Award Goes to...a Fly

March 22nd, 2024

Today's Honorary Bee Image Award goes to...drum roll...an image of a humble hoverfly appearing on the National Geographic Facebook page. The caption reads "A bee sits on a marigold flower in Coronado National Forest, Arizona, USA.