Sonoma

Kathy Kellison is on a mission: to encourage winegrape growers to plant Bee-Helpful Cover Crops. This would include mustards, clover and buckwheat, plants that honey bees love. Kellison, the executive director of the Santa Rosa-based Partners for Sustainable Pollination, will speak Thursday, Aug.

If you're on your way to Bodega Bay in Sonoma County, stop at Bodega Head and see all the yellow-faced bumble bees on a yellow coastal plant, Eriophyllum, commonly known as the woolly sunflower. The bumble bees, Bombus vosnesenskii, are back and they particularly like the Eriophyllum.

Those who hike the trails of Bodega Head, a small promontory in Sonoma County overlooking the Pacific Ocean, enjoy the colorful wildflowers, the roaring ocean, and a sheltered sandy beach. They picnic. They play. They pose for photos. But there's one thing they don't do.

Visitors to Bodega Head, Sonoma County, will see lupine, California golden poppies, wild radish, mustard, seaside daises and scores of other flowers in bloom. And if they're lucky--a metallic blue digger wasp from the Sphecidae family of thread-waisted wasps.

It's "Orange October" for the San Francisco Giants, who just defeated the Detroit Tigers in the opening game of the World Series. But over at the Luther Burbank's Gold Ridge Experiment Farm at 7781 Bodega Ave., Sebastopol, it's Blue October.

What's that caterpillar? This little fellow (or gal) was munching--quite contentedly, thank you--on the leaves of an aspen tree. The homeowner didn't take too kindly to the critter defoliating his prized tree, newly purchased in Oregon and newly planted in Vacaville, Calif.

Since this is National Pollinator Week, you're probably out celebrating the bees--maybe doing hand stands, cartwheels and pirouettes. But have you ever thought about beetles as pollinators? They are. We spotted this little critter on a California golden poppy at the Sonoma Mission in Sonoma, Calif.

If you're planning to hike the hills around Bodega Head in Sonoma County, watch out for the bears. The woolly bear caterpillars, that is. Last Sunday, with the temperature hovering around 70 degrees, the woolly bears were everywhere.

The yellow-faced bumble bees are back! And amid the throes of winter and the promise of spring. On a trip Feb. 27 to Bodega Bay, we spotted two yellow-faced bumble bees (Bombus vosnesenskii) about two miles apart.

The public, says entomologist Kris Godfrey, needs to become more aware of the threat of invasive species. And, she adds, we need to educate people and organizations about the incoming pests and pests that are already here.