Bug Squad

Bumble bee on bull thistle at Bodega Bay

Looking for a specific Blog post?

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 Kniphofia "Christmas Cheer" poker plant, seen here in the Ruth Risdon Storer Garden and nearby area, grows in clumps. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Article

Spreading Some Holiday Cheer

December 28, 2023

If you've lately visited the Ruth Risdon Storer Garden, part of the 100-acre UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, you've seen them. Honey bees nectaring on the Kniphofia "Christmas Cheer" poker plant.

View Article

A cabbage white butterfly in flight, heading toward lantana in a Vacaville garden. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Article

Suds for a Bug? Net the First Cabbage White and Win a Beer!

December 27, 2023

A beer for a butterfly? Suds for a bug? It's almost time for the Art Shapiro's annual "Beer-for-a-Butterfly" contest that he's sponsored since 1972.

View Article

A yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, forages on Eryngium amethystinum, a genus that belongs to the carrot family, Apiaceae. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Article

UC Davis Arboretum Is the Magical Place to Find the First-of-the-Year Bumble Bee

December 26, 2023

If history repeats itself, the person who finds and photographs the first bumble bee of the year in the two-county area of Yolo and Solano will do so in the 100-acre UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden--or will find it foraging on a plant purchased from one of the Arboretum's popular plant sales.

View Article

A feral honey bee colony (now gone) from a backyard in Vacavile, Calif. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Article

It's Bee-ginning to Look a Lot Like...

December 25, 2023

It's bee-ginning to look a lot like Christmas... All hail our littlest agricultural worker. European colonists brought the honey bee (Apis mellifera) to what is now the United States in 1622. Specifically, the bees arrived at the Jamestown colony (Virginia).

View Article

A golden honey bee, a Cordovan, nectaring in a Vacaville, Calif., garden. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Article

Revisiting 'The 13 Bugs of Christmas'

December 22, 2023

Back in 2010, UC Cooperative Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen (1944-2022) of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and yours truly, department communications specialist, wondered why no insects appear in "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Zero. Zilch. Nada.

View Article