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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The queen and her court. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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The Spirit of the Hive

March 7, 2013
The Spirit of the Hive: The Mechanisms of Social Evolution. That's the title of a newly published book written by Robert E. Page Jr., one of the world's foremost honey bee geneticists.
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Honey bee foraging on plum blossoms. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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Bee-utiful Blossoms

March 6, 2013
If you haven't made it over to the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis, yet this year, you should. The trees that form "Orchard Alley" are blooming. You'll see almonds and plums flowering, and soon, apples. Really spectacular are the delicate plum blossoms.
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A lady beetle, aka ladybug, prowling on a fava bean leaf. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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Favoring the Fava Beans

March 5, 2013
People aren't the only ones favoring fava beans. Fava beans growing in a raised bed in the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis, are attracting honey bees, European paper wasps, lacewings, ladybugs, aphids and carpenter bees.
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Jumping spider on a petunia. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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Jump!

March 4, 2013
There's a good reason why jumping spiders are named "jumping spiders." They jump. A jumping spider, according to National Geographic, can jump 50 times its body length. We saw this jumping spider (family, Salticidae and probably genus Phidippus) in our flower bed last weekend.
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