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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia, dubbed by the news media as “the murder hornet." The Entomological Society of America recently established as its official common name, “northern giant hornet.” (Photo courtesy of the Washington State Department of Agriculture)
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Wasps, Wasps, Wasps: Weird and Wonderful Wasps

September 21, 2022
Do you have a question about wasps or want to learn more about them? Be sure to attend the free and family friendly Bohart Museum of Entomology open house on "Weird and Wonderful Wasps" from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 25 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.
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A Western yellowjacket, Vespula pensylvanica, sipping water at UC Davis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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Make Way for the Weird and Wonderful Wasps

September 20, 2022
Meet the "meat bees." Yellowjackets, commonly known as "meat bees," in comparison to the "vegetarian" honey bees, will be among the wasps featured at the Bohart Museum of Entomology's open house from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, Sept.
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A syrphid fly foraging on a mellow yellow blanket flower, Gaillardia. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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To Be a Fly on Friday, What a Day!

September 16, 2022
To be a fly on Friday, what a day! Entomologists who came up with "Friday Fly Day" are having a lot of fun posting images on social media of flies on Friday. If you access WikiHow, "What to Do on a Friday Night," you'll find all kinds of suggestions.
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Find the monarch! A monarch stopped to nectar in a Mexican petunia patch Sept. 15 in a Vacaville pollinator garden. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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Why the Petunia Patch Reigned Supreme Today

September 15, 2022
All year long, we've been waiting for those majestic monarchs to visit our pollinator garden in Vacaville, as they have in the past 10 years or so. One year (2020), they deposited more than 300 eggs on our milkweed. But this year? Zero. Zilch. Nada. Where are you? Dawn. Noon. Dusk.
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