Bug Squad

It's almost time for Halloween, when all self-respecting little ghosts, goblins and ghouls take a special interest in spiders. We saw this little jumping spider (below) on a pink rose. It doesn't look like it could scare anything--except for maybe a sweat bee or hover fly.

If you want to know more about honey and pollination, then mark your calendar for Saturday, Oct. 27. That's the date of the debut event of the newly established Honey and Pollination Center of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science (RMI).

It's a bug-eat-bug world out there. Today we watched a syrphid fly, aka "hover fly" and "flower fly," circling a blanket flower (Gaillardia) and then touching down to sip a little nectar. Syrphids are called "hover flies" for good reason. They "hover" over a blossom, helicoperlike.

At first they appeared on our pomegranate tree, our 85-year-old pomegranate tree. Then they migrated over to our passion flower vine, Passiflora, where we're trying to rear Gulf Fritillary butterflies (Agraulis vanillae). They're leaffooted bug nymphs, Leptoglossus clypealis.

One thing's for certain--a praying mantis does not like to get wet. If it were human, it would not dip a toe in the water and yell to its friends: "C'mon in, the water's fine!" Water is not fine--not to a praying mantis.