Bug Squad

"I do! I do! I do!" Some of us engage in wedding photography. Not with humans. With insects. All you need is a bride, a groom and ahmmbedroom. That could be a leafy green bedroom in the rose garden where the lady beetles, aka ladybugs, are. Most of the time they're in the kitchen, eating aphids.

So here's this lady beetle patrolling a rosebud. It's early spring--April 15--in Vacaville, Calif.--and our little subject is looking for some tasty aphids. Or perhaps a mate. Oh, a visitor is on my rosebud, heading right toward me.

Can the larvae of lady beetles (aka ladybugs) eat aphids? Yes, they can. And yes, they do. We spotted some lady beetle larvae on our yellow roses today and guess what they were doing? Right, eating aphids. Eating lots of aphids.

Is it an insect? How can you tell? When the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology participates in the 103rd annual UC Davis Picnic Day on Saturday, April 22, visitors to Briggs Hall and the Bohart Museum of Entomology will learn all about insects.

Ol' Blue Eyes. What a treat to see. No, not an old movie starring Ol' Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra (1915-1998), but the blue-eyed darner, the Rhionaeschna multicolor blue-eyed darner, Aeshna multicolor.