Santa Cruz

It's National Pollinator Week and you might be wondering where your pollinators are. I'd love to attract honey bees, bumble bees and other pollinators, but what can I do?" you ask.

It's surprising what the microbes in nectar can reveal. Take the nectar of the sticky monkeyflower, Mimulus auranticus.

Do you have sheep and/or goats? Are you interested in learning about small ruminant nutrition, disease prevention, the new veterinary feed directive, or using sheep and goats to manage weeds and fire fuels?

Despite the widespread interest in migrating monarch butterflies, other insects migrate, too. That's way we were excited to see National Public Radio's Nell Greenfieldboyce generate a recent piece on "Bugs Abound: If You Think the Skies Are Crowded, You Have No Idea.

Nice to see you! That's how we greeted our very last bumble bee of 2016. The yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, apparently came out of hibernation and started nectaring on mallow Nov. 14 at the Natural Bridges State Park, Santa Cruz.

This is a story about how eight monarch butterflies escaped the freezing temperatures of Vacaville, Calif., and hitchhiked to sunny Santa Cruz, thanks to Good Samaritans (Good Monarcharians?) Rita LeRoy and Walter Rockholt of Vallejo.

So here we are, planning a long-awaited 113-mile trip from Solano County to Natural Bridges State Park, Santa Cruz, to admire and photograph the overwintering monarch butterflies. Then it happened.

What amazing journeys! For the last two months, migratory monarch butterflies have regularly stopped for flight fuel in our 600-square-foot pollinator garden in Vacaville, Calif. to nectar on Mexican sunflower (Tithonia), butterfly bush (Buddleia) and Lantana.

Those amazing monarch butterflies! We're looking forward to a seminar on UC Davis-based research on monarchs in the Pacific Islands.

The recent find of the Kuroshio shot-hole borer in Santa Barbara shows that the beetle is expanding up the coast and it comes on top of the finding earlier this year of a single Kuroshio shot-hole borer in San Luis Obispo.