Bug Blog
Surprise! Bees and Ants More Closely Related Than Most Wasps
Who would have thought? Who would have thought that ants are more closely related to bees than they are to most wasps? In ground-breaking research to be published Oct. 21 in Current Biology, a team...
A bee and an ant; they're more closely related than they are to most wasps. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Ants and bees are more genetically related to each other than they are to social wasps, such as this yellow jacket. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
On the Trail of the Giant Hornet
A hornet’s nest is nothing like a bee in the bonnet. You don’t want to mess with hornets, especially the world's largest hornet, found in many parts of Asia. Lynn Kimsey, director of the...
This is the world's largest hornet, Vespa mandarinia. (Photo by Terry Prouty, courtesy of Wikpedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hornetboy1970)
Color Them Beautiful
A brilliant sunflower clinging to the red ring of autumn. And here comes a common sunflower bee, Melissodes agilis (this is a female, as identified by native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp,...
Sunflower bee, Melissodes agilis, on sunflower. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Hi, nice to meet you! (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Time to leave! (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
The Queen of the Queen Bees
Great to see the Wall Street Journal feature bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey in its Oct. 1st piece, "A Scientist Teaches Drones and Queens the Birds and the Bees." Sue Cobey is world renowned for...
Bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, UC Davis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
"Queen of the Queen Bees" Susan Cobey checking the hives at UC Davis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
These are Carniolans, which Susan Cobey rears. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
To Bee or Not To Bee?
To bee or not to bee? That was not the question. There was no question. The answer was "yes" before the event began. When visiting bee scientist Jakub Gabka of Warsaw, Poland, studied at the Harry...
Jakub Gabka, a bee scientist from Poland, held this expression for a minute during the bee beard event at UC Davis. This photo appears on the cover of the current American Bee Journal. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)