Alameda

It's just in time for National Pollinator Week, June 16-22.

It's all about knowing the biodiversity in Knowland Park. And trying to save it from development. Scientists and citizen-scientists will gather Sunday, June 1 in the western highlands of the Oakland park to conduct a "bioblitz"--or a tally of the biodiversity of animals and plants living there.

Light brown apple moth (LBAM), Epiphyas postvittana (Walker) was recently found in Santa Barbara County for the sixth time. LBAM is a quarantine pest on the United States mainland and can cause serious damage to various crops, nurseries, fruit trees, landscapes, and native plants.

If you missed the Honey! event sponsored by the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science and held recently in the UC Davis Conference Center, not to worry. James R.

It's not your average garden variety calendar. It's absolutely bee-utiful. Native bees reign supreme in Garden Variety Native Bees of North America, a calendar produced by University of California alumni as a benefit for two non-profit organizations.

The locusts are coming! The locusts are coming! No, not the one below, a banded-winged grasshopper (family Acrididae and subfamily Oedipodinae) that we spotted west of the UC Davis campus--and identified by Steve Heydon, senior museum scientist at the Bohart Museum of Entomology.

Most entomologists I know maintain a keen sense of humor.

Bam! LBAM is back in the news. The California Department of Food and Agriculture announced Aug. 29 that it has established a 19-square-mile quarantine straddling portions of two counties after the light brown apple moth (LBAM) was found July 23 in Napa County and Aug. 10 in Sonoma County.