Bug Squad

It's off to Japan to talk about bumble bees and other pollinators. Pollination ecologist Neal Williams, assistant professor of entomology at UC Davis, will be one of the featured speakers at the International Symposium on Pollinator Conservation, to be held Jan. 27-29 in Fukuoka, Japan.

No matter what insect you're interested in, you can usually find your favorite topic at one of the Northern California Entomology Society meetings. The group meets three times a year: once in Sacramento, once at UC Davis and once at Concord. Dues? $10 a year.

When you try to attract leafcutting bees (Megachile spp.) to your bee condos, you may also attract something else. Wasps. Bee condos (wood blocks drilled with holes for native bee nests) are a favorite of gardeners and bee enthusiasts.

Have you ever observed how a honey bee swarm finds a new home? How a few of the worker bees turn into scouts, scour their surroundings, and then return to the swarm and dance to communicate their findings? Thomas Seeley has. Many times.

It will be like "old-home week" when Anurag Agrawal returns to the University of California, Davis, tomorrow (Jan. 18) to deliver a seminar on "Evolutionary Ecology of Plant Defenses.