Bug Squad

The economy is tanked. The cuts keep coming. The smiles fade. Not tomorrow. Friday afternoon, July 17 is the seventh annual Bruce's Big Balloon Battle at Briggs.

Honey bees--what do you know about them? Do you know what the queen bee, worker bees and drones do? Do you know why bees swarm? Do you want to learn to be a beekeeper? Or, if you already are a beekeeper, how do you keep your hives healthy? If you're a researcher, what are your colleagues doing?

Peter Pan vowed he'd never grow up. "I won't grow up!" yelled the boy, a figment of a Scottish novelist's imagination. "I won't grow up!" So it is with Peter Pan Agapanthus (Agapanthus africanus), a dwarf version of a spectacular flower known as Lily of the Nile. It won't grow up.

Eagle-eyed Carol Nickles saw it first. The graduate student coordinator for the UC Davis Department of Entomology spotted the bee swarm from a third-floor window of Briggs Hall. There it was, swaying on a tree branch, about 25 feet above the ground.

Sometimes you don't think about the declining bee population when you see a pollen-dusted honey bee rolling around in a poppy blossom, but colony collapse disorder (CCD) is still with us. Pollinator protection is a must. That's why we were glad to see the U. S.