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

Honey bee geneticist Robert E. Page Jr. examining a swarm.

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Honey Bee Geneticist Rob Page Launches YouTube Channel: Fascinating World of Bees

May 4, 2023

If you're interested in bees--as a scientist, beekeeper or just as an enthusiast--you'll want to access the newly launched YouTube Channel of internationally acclaimed honey bee geneticist Robert E. Page Jr., a UC Davis alumnus and an emeritus administrator at UC Davis and Arizona State University.

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Pollination ecologist and professor Neal Williams, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will speak on "Native Bees and their Conservation"at 10:30 a.m., May 6 on the UC Davis Speakers' Stage at the California Honey Festival. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Check Out the UC Davis Speakers' Stage at the California Honey Festival

May 3, 2023

What a line-up! Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, has organized a fantastic group of speakers for the UC Davis Speakers' Stage at the California Honey Festival, set Saturday, May 6 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in downtown Woodland. The event is free and family friendly.

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Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center, and co-founder of the California Honey Festival, talks about honey. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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California Honey Festival: The Place to 'Bee' on May 6

May 2, 2023

The California Honey Festival is the place to "bee" on Saturday, May 6 in downtown Woodland. The festival, free and family friendly, takes place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event celebrates the importance of bees, and promotes honey and honey bees and their products.

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John Hargrove in South Africa providing expertise on the tsetse fly. (Photo by Pietro Ceccato of the SERVIR Applied Sciences Team)

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John Hargrove: Targeting Tsetse, Trypanosomiasis and Climate Change

May 1, 2023

African trypanosomiasis, also called sleeping sickness, is a disease caused by a parasite. People can get this parasite when an infected Tsetse fly bites them. Symptoms include fatigue, high fever, headaches, and muscle aches. If the disease is not treated, it can cause death.

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Look closely and you can see a squirrel occupying a small hollow or cavity in a sycamore tree. The cavity has been home to feral bees for at least two decades. (Image taken in Vacaville by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Squirrel Vs. Bees: Sorry, No Vacancy!

April 28, 2023

Call it The Battle Over a Tree Hollow." Feral bees have occupiedand abandoneda sycamore tree cavity in a Vacaville neighborhood for at least two decades. They occupy it in the spring, summer and fall, and then the colony either absconds or dies back in the winter.

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