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

The makings of a European paper wasp nest in Davis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Bohart Museum: How to Make a Paper Wasp Nest

January 18, 2024

When the Bohart Museum of Entomology hosts an open house on "Social Wasps" from 1 to 4 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 20, the traditional family art-and-crafts activity will be something special.

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A cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, sipping nectar on catmint (Nepeta). (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Beer for a Butterfly? No Winner Yet!

January 17, 2024

As of today, Jan. 17, no one has won the Beer-for-a-Butterfly contest sponsored by butterfly guru Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus of the Department of Evolution and Ecology.

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A bigeyed bug on the wing of a monarch butterfly. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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A Bigeyed Bug and a Monarch Butterfly

January 16, 2024

You've heard folks call insects "big 'ol bugs" (often in astonishment or terror), right? But have you ever seen a "bigeyed bug on a monarch butterfly?" Bigeyed bugs, Geocoris spp.

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A honey bee and a Western yellowjacket meet on a rose at a UC Davis bee garden. Both are pollinators. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Wasps: Fascinating Insects But Often Demonized

January 15, 2024

If you hate wasps, and brush them off as just "uninvited guests at my picnic," take another look. For one, they're pollinators. Two, they're great predators, contributing to the biocontrol of such lepidopteran pests as cabbageworms (larva of cabbage white butterflies).

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This is one of the images of monarchs that Davis resident Larry Snyder took at the North Davis Channel.

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Larry Snyder Sharing Images of 'Insects at the Ditch'

January 12, 2024

They crawl, they fly, they flutter, they buzz. They look at us, and we look back. But if you're Larry Snyder of Davis, an insect photographer and a retired musician, you not only look back, but you take their images.

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