Bug Squad

It's not just future entomologists who study insects. So do future physicians, veterinarians, chemists, ecologists and scores of others.

"Just wanna be your teddy bear..." When Elvis Presley sang that, his fans swooned. Well, there are bee fans that can't get enough of the "teddy bear" bee, aka the male Valley carpenter bee (Xylocopa varipuncta). It's often called a "golden bumble bee." Golden, it is. Bumble bee, it is not.

If you're suffering from a sleep disorder, then you'll want to know the kind of research that molecular geneticist Joanna Chiu of the UC Davis Department of Entomology is doing--with fruit flies. The research may one day lead to alleviating your sleep disorder.

If you enjoy climbing the cliffs of Bodega Head on the Sonoma coast, keep your eyes out for bears--wooly bear caterpillars, that is. The so-called "wooly bear caterpillar" is reddish, black and woolly and has a voracious appetite much like that of Joey Chestnut.

Nero may have fiddled while Rome burned, but the honey bees just kept on working. We recently visited an apiary in Glenn County, and the honey bees were all over the fiddlenecks in patches adjacent to the hives. A springtime scene of golden flowers and buzzing bees. An artist's dream...