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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Honey bee on purple coneflower. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Article

Nothin' Like a Cone

August 8, 2011
There's nothing quite like a cone--no, not an ice cream cone. A purple coneflower. The purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea, family Asteraceae), looks like royalty in the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven at the University of California, Davis.
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Honey bee working the catmint (Nepeta). (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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Cooperative Bee

August 5, 2011
If you want to attract honey bees in your garden, you can't go wrong by planting catmint (genus Nepeta). Honey bees like the mints. So do cabbage white butterflies, wool carder bees, carpenter bees and hover flies, among other insects. Nepeta is easy to grow.
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Earwig inside a blue orchard bee condo, which has larger holes than one for leafcutting bees. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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Home Invasion!

August 4, 2011
When you install bee condos--those wooden blocks with holes drilled in them to attract nesting native bees--sometimes you get the unexpected. Like earwigs! Home invasion! Home invasion! We installed two bee condos, each about the size of a brick, in our yard.
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This colorful butterfly is the work of 3-year-old Nicholas Razo of Dixon. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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What's a Fair Without Bugs?

August 3, 2011
What's a picnic without bugs? What's a county fair without bugs? If you meander through McCormack Hall at the Solano County Fair, Vallejo, you'll see plenty of insects.
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