Bug Squad

Ever wonder why the stink bug stinks? The stink bug, from the family Pentamodae, is a shield-shaped insect that tomato growers would love to ban from the face of this earth. Some 50 species exist in California. The adults are either brown or green. Most stink bugs are plant feeders.

Okay, everybody in the pool! That means bees, too? It does. Sweat bees. You may have noticed the tiny bees--common name sweat bees from the family Halictidae--in your swimming pool or pollinating your flowers. They're attracted to perspiring skin (thus the name sweat bees).

Some folks wear their heart on their sleeve. Others wear a dragonfly on their chest. As part of its public outreach education program and to showcase the world of insects, the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, has created t-shirts featuring a California dragonfly.

To bee or not to bee. Not to bee. The flying insect hovering over the Ruth Risdon Storer Garden, UC Davis Arboretum, looked like a honey bee or wasp at first glance. It wasn't. It was a hover fly or syphrid fly from the order Diptera (Greek for "two wings") and family Syrphidae.

It's like going to the circus. A bee circus. When you see honey bees gather pollen from a gaura (Gaura linheimeri), it's as if they ran off and joined the circus. You'll see hire-wire (er...high-stem) acts, somersaults, pirouettes, cartwheels and cliffhangers.