Bug Blog
How's Your Front Yard Looking?
How's your front yard looking? A little bit brown due to the drought? Thinking of replacing some of your plants with drought-tolerant ones? And hoping to attract some bees, butterflies and other...
A Gulf Fritillary butterfly on purple lantana. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A honey bee on pink chaparral current. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Sweat bees (Halictus ligatus) on goldenrod. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A syrphid fly, aka hover fly and flower fly, on Russian sage. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Highly Infectious Viral Disease, 'Kind of Like Ebola'
It's something you don't see every day. I'm used to seeing Gulf Fritillary chrysalids hanging from our passionflower vine (Passiflora) but this thing hanging from our African blue basil was not a...
This is a dead caterpillar killed by an infectious virus disease (Polyhedrosis), as identified by UC Davis butterfly expert Art Shapiro. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Honey Is Not Bee Vomit
For years, uninformed folks have declared that honey is "bee vomit." It's not. These things are inequitably false. 1. The world is flat. 2. Einstein said that "if the bee disappeared off the...
Honey is not bee vomit. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
How to Pin a Butterfly
How do you pin and spread a butterfly? Entomologist Jeff Smith, an associate at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California, Davis, showed everyone from pre-schoolers to adults...
Entomologist Jeff Smith shows Cassidy Hansen fof Rio Vista how to pin a butterly. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Cassidy Hansen works on a butterfly. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Close-up of the project. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A white-lined sphinx moth, Hyles lineata. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
The white-lined sphinx moth has a long proboscis (tongue). (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Why Do Honey Bees Die When They Sting
"Why do honey bees die when they sting?" That's the question PBS Newshour asked Extension apiculturist (retired) Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology for its "Just...
A honey bee embeds its stinger in the wrist of Eric Mussen and then tries to pull away. Note the abdominal tissue trailing. (This is an actual photo of a bee sting; it was not posed.) (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
The bee has pulled away to die, leaving the stinger and abdominal tissue behind. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)