Bug Squad Blog
By Kathy Keatley Garvey

"Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home!
"Your house is on fire and your children are gone”

Who hasn’t loved that nursery rhyme about ladybugs? (Actually, ladybugs are beetles, not bugs, but that’s a different story.)

At the 111th annual campuswide UC Davis Picnic Day on Saturday, April 12,  the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM) is giving away ladybugs--primarily meant for children--in its educational booth in the Briggs Hall Courtyard. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., they will share IPM information, answer questions, and provide other giveaways (“spin the wheel and win a prize,” and “would you also like a temporary insect tattoo?”) 

It's all part of the plethora of entomological activities and displays organized by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology (ENT). The event will include roach races, maggot art, T-shirt sales, glowing bugs, display of pollinators, fly-tying demonstrations, and mosquito control information. The Bohart Museum of Entomology’s pop-up tent is also part of the event.  There you can view the “Oh, My” drawers of insect specimens, and you can try your  insect-netting skills (catch a replica butterfly tossed at you, and if you catch it, you’ll win a Bohart Museum poster). The tenants of the live petting zoo are also waiting for you: hold a stick insect (walking stick) and pet a Madagascar hissing cockroach. (See more on the ENT website)

And about those ladybugs...They don't just "fly away home." 

They eat some 50 aphids a day, or about 5000 in their lifetime. Talk about beneficial insects...