Bug Squad

Will the real honey bee stand up? Not all bees are honey bees and not all floral visitors that look like bees are bees. Sometimes they're flies. A recent trip to the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee friendly garden located next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr.

It all begins at the Bohart. The Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis, that is. Officials at the museum, located at 1124 Academic Surge on California Drive, have just announced the complete list of weekend openings for the 2011-2012 academic year.

The target: the dengue mosquito. The occasion: A UC Davis Department of Entomology seminar. Jacklyn Wong, who last summer received her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis, studying with major professor and mosquito expert Tom Scott, will headline the department's first fall seminar.

The skipper wasn't skipping. In fact, it wasn't doing much of anything. The fiery skipper butterfly (Hylephila phyleus), tangled in a spider web, struggled furiously to free itself. Not going to happen. The sticky substance stuck to her like super glue. It's a scene you don't often see.

Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, is on a mission. He and fellow members of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation are trying to save Franklin's bumble bee from extinction.