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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peek a bee! A honey bee forages on tropical milkweed blossoms while a monarch caterpillar chows down. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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Love at First Bite, Love at First Sip

June 26, 2020
Picture this during National Pollinator Week: five monarch caterpillars and assorted honey bees sharing tropical milkweed. It was love at first bite. Or love at first sip. The 'cats kept munching and the bees kept foraging. Neither species seemed interested in the other.
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A honey bee struggles to fit inside a strawberry blossom. In the bee world, one size fits all.(Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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Come on In--the Pollen's Fine

June 25, 2020
She didn't know it was National Pollinator Week. If she had, she would have paid it no mind. She just knew that this was some fine pollen as she struggled to fit inside the strawberry blossom. The honey bee, Apis mellifera, is like that: determined, decisive, and mission-bound.
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What's pollinating the squash blossom? A squash bee, Peponapis pruinosa, a species of solitary bee in the tribue Eucerini. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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Got Squash? Got Squash Bees?

June 22, 2020
Got squash blossoms? You've probably got squash bees. Unlike honey bees, which are generalists, squash bees are specialists. They pollinate only members of the cucurbits or squash family, Cucurbitaceae, which includes pumpkins, squash, gourds, cucumbers and zucchini.
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