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
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Honey bee and male carpenter bee (Xylocopa varipuncta) on tower of jewels (Echium wildpretii). (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Article

Just Wanna Be Your Teddy Bear...

April 28th, 2011
"Just wanna be your teddy bear..." When Elvis Presley sang that, his fans swooned. Well, there are bee fans that can't get enough of the "teddy bear" bee, aka the male Valley carpenter bee (Xylocopa varipuncta). It's often called a "golden bumble bee." Golden, it is. Bumble bee, it is not.
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Molecular geneticist Joanna Chiu at work in her lab at UC Davis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Article

Fruit Fly Research: Link to Human Sleep Disorders

April 27th, 2011
If you're suffering from a sleep disorder, then you'll want to know the kind of research that molecular geneticist Joanna Chiu of the UC Davis Department of Entomology is doing--with fruit flies. The research may one day lead to alleviating your sleep disorder.
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A wooly bear caterpillar munching on foliage at the Bodega Head. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Article

A Wooly Bear of a Caterpillar

April 26th, 2011
If you enjoy climbing the cliffs of Bodega Head on the Sonoma coast, keep your eyes out for bears--wooly bear caterpillars, that is. The so-called "wooly bear caterpillar" is reddish, black and woolly and has a voracious appetite much like that of Joey Chestnut.
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Honey bee settles on a fiddleneck. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Article

Fiddle De-Dee!

April 25th, 2011
Nero may have fiddled while Rome burned, but the honey bees just kept on working. We recently visited an apiary in Glenn County, and the honey bees were all over the fiddlenecks in patches adjacent to the hives. A springtime scene of golden flowers and buzzing bees. An artist's dream...
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Honey bee heads for the tower of jewels (Echium wildpretii). There are two bees in this photo. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Article

Bee-Hold the Tower of Jewels

April 22nd, 2011
It's worth the wait. The two towers of jewels (Echium wildpretti) are blooming in the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, the half-acre bee friendly garden next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, UC Davis. The plant is a biennual and it blooms the second year and that's it.
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