Bug Squad

Turning 40 can be mind-boggling. But it will be bee-boggling--all bee-boggling--when the Western Apicultural Society (WAS) meets Sept. 5-8 at the University of California, Davis for its 40th annual conference. So much to do. So much to hear. So much to talk about.

Everybody eats in the pollinator garden. Everybody. The pollinators in our garden in Vacaville, Calif., sip the nectar. They include honey bees, bumble bees, carpenter bees, sweat bees, European wool carder bees, hover flies and assorted butterflies. The predators eat, too.

The Beatle Boys made their mark in Liverpool, but across the pond, specifically at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California, Davis, the real Beetle Boys emergedentomology-driven youth who have made their mark with the Coleopterists Society, an international society devoted to the st...

Talk about a butterfly ballet... A large Western tiger swallowtail, Papilio rutulus, with a wingspan of about four inches, flutters into the Vacaville, Calif. pollinator garden and lands on a Mexican sunflower (Tithonia).

Have you ever seen a snakefly? Not a snake. Not a fly. A snakefly! They're predators but rarely seen. They eat insects such as aphids and mites. They have a long neck, or technically, an elongated prothorax, their most distinguishing characteristic.