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

NATIVE BEE, a Svastra obliqua expurgata, forages on top of a Mexican hat flower at the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven at UC Davis. The bee is commonly known as "the sunflower bee." The flower is sometimes called a "prairie coneflower." (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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Feel Like Dancing?

August 24, 2010

Collecting pollen and nectar is serious business. But when a native wild bee such as the Svastra obliqua expurgata, also called "the sunflower bee," forages on a Mexican hat flower, it adds a little gaiety to the scene.

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Chasing Carder Bees

August 23, 2010

When this insect flashes by you in your garden, at first glance you think: "Yellow jacket? Paper wasp? What's that?" Then it lands and you realize it's neither. It's a bee.

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About Those Pickled Peppers

August 20, 2010

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked; If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

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Another Use of a Potted Plant

August 19, 2010

When temperatures soar, look for honey bees to head for water resources. On the grounds of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at the University of California, Davis, something as simple as a freshly watered potted plant will do.

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Beetle Mania

August 18, 2010

Gardeners pinch them. Photographers shoot them. Hikers wonder what they are. The spotted cucumber beetle (Diabrotica) is a major agricultural pest. You'll see it on cucumbers, squash, corn, beans, watermelons, musk melons, cotton, tomatoes and other crops.

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