Bug Squad

Bumble bee on bull thistle at Bodega Bay

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UC ANR is renovating its website. The Bug Squad blog, by Kathy Keatley Garvey of the University of California, Davis, is a daily (Monday-Friday) blog launched Aug. 6, 2008. It is about the wonderful world of insects and the entomologists who study them. Blog posts are archived at https://my.ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/archive.cfm

An Italian honey bee nectaring on phacelia. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Do Blondes Have More Fun?

August 15, 2013

Shirley Polykoff (1909-1998), the advertising legend who coined the words "Is it true blondes have more fun?" for a Clairol jingle, raised awareness of blondes, insinuating that "gentlemen prefer blondes.

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Yellowjackets are attracted to this plastic container. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Not What You Want in Your Drink

August 14, 2013

On an outing last Saturday to a Marin County restaurant, we spotted half-filled glasses lining a railing near the picnic tables. As the guests dined on seafood, yellowjackets dined on bits of protein left behind.

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Tiny Gulf Fritillary butterfly egg at end of a tendril on a passionflower vine. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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It All Begins with an Egg

August 13, 2013

It's no surprise that students as young as kindergarteners are eager to learn about the life cycle of a butterfly--from an egg, to a caterpillar to a chrysalis to an adult. Complete metamorphosis. Complete awe.

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Female Gulf Fritillary butterfly dries her wings after emerging from her chrysalis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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It's a Girl!

August 12, 2013

At last! From an egg to a caterpillar to a chrysalis to a butterfly. And it's a girl! For several days we've been protecting a Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) chryalis on our passionflower vine (Passiflora) from predators.

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Praying mantis waits and waits. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Let Us Prey

August 9, 2013

So patient, so passionate. The praying mantis looked hungry last Thursday when it perched on a coneflower in the half-acre Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road, University of California, Davis. Where's breakfast? Where's lunch? Where's dinner? Nowhere to be found.

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