Kings

Californias Conservation Agriculture Systems Institute (CASI) has prepared its survey of tillage management acreage for 2010.

It's good to see so many people looking for the critically imperiled Franklin's bumble bee, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may soon list as endangered and provide protective status.

Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, is on a mission. He and fellow members of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation are trying to save Franklin's bumble bee from extinction.

A good time to photograph the European wool carder bee is in the early morning when it's warming its muscles to prepare for flight. It lies perfectly still. That's what it did in our yard last weekend. It warmed itself on the sunny side of a leaf. Not unlike the sunny side of a street...

Tabatha Yang saw it first. She's the education and outreach coordinator for the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis. What she saw--in a grassy field at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, west of the central campus--was a golden ladybug, aka lady beetle.

The Bohart Museum of Entomology has five. Nature has none. Zip. Zero. Zilch. The Xerces Blue Butterfly, which once thrived on the San Francisco Peninsula before urbanization chased it away, is extinct. There are no more.

An exotic bug is found invading parts of southern California and Arizona. It is referred to as painted bug in some literature and is similar to the harlequin bug, Murgantia histrionic in appearance.

An article about silage corn production using conservation tillage was one of Progressive Forage Grower's Top 10 most well-read online articles in 2010, the magazine announced.

If youre into bugs, the Bohart Museum of Entomology on the UC Davis campus has plenty of them. Butterflies? Check. Dragonflies? Check. Native bees? Check.

The honey bee sculpture that graces the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis is bee-u-tiful. It's the work of nationally renowned artist Donna Billick, based in Davis.