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 image of a black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, was taken in Benicia on Jan. 25, 2020. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Wanted: The First Bumble Bee of the Year in Yolo or Solano Counties

December 28, 2021

Wanted: the first bumble bee of the year in Yolo or Solano Counties! If you're the first to photograph one and email it to the Bohart Museum of Entomology you'll win the prize: a coffee cup designed with an image of the endangered Franklin's bumble bee.

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Randa Jabbour, first seminar speaker of the quarter

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UC Davis Department of Entomology Rolling Out the Seminar Schedule

December 27, 2021

Ready for the new year? The UC Davis Department of Nematology's winter quarter seminars will take place on Wednesdays at 4:10 p.m., beginning Jan. 5 and continuing through March 9, announced seminar coordinator and nematologist Shahid Siddique, assistant professor.

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Santa greets a monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus. This one is a male. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...Chrysalis

December 24, 2021

It's beginning to look a lot like...chrysalis. It didn't "look at all like chrysalis" this year in our pollinator garden in Vacaville, Calif. We spotted only one monarch--repeat, only one monarch--and it fluttered around and finally oviposited on our milkweed. The eggs vanished.

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A beewolf photographed by Gwen Erdosh, aka Gwentomologit, and posted on her Instagram account.

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The Amazing World of 'Gwentomologist' Gwen Erdosh

December 23, 2021

"It's wasp time! This is a beewolf! Have you ever heard of beewolves? Well, neither had I until I discovered a bunch of them nectaring on Queen Anne's Lace flowers near my apartment complex! Have you noticed a pattern in the insects I post? A lot of them prey on bees.

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In this award-winning image, a cuckoo bee, Nomada sp.(left), and an Anthophora bee share honey on a twig. The work of Ian Wright, it was selected as a September (inset) image in the ESA's World of Insects calendar. (Copyrighted Photo by Ian Wright)

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Image by UC Davis Alumnus Ian Wright Appears in ESA World Calendar

December 22, 2021

The 2022 Entomological Society of America's World of Insects Calendar is filled with amazing images and one of them is by UC Davis alumnus Ian Wright of Riverside, a field biologist and research specialist with the UC Riverside Department of Entomology. His work shows a cuckoo bee (Nomada sp.

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