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If you have Mexican sunflowers (genus Tithonia) in your garden, you can expect a diversity of insects--and not just honey bees. Lately we've been photographing all the insects that visit the Tithonia in our bee garden.
It's good to see so many scientists and citizen scientists taking an avid interest in monarchs. The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), probably the most recognizable of all the butterflies, is known for its long migratory route from Canada to Mexico.
My late father, who called me "Katydid," loved poetry. Decades after he passed, a cousin gave me a set of his books from his childhood home. One was "The Early Poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes," published in 1899 by T. Y. Crowell and Company. In it is a poem, "To an Insect," and it's about katydids.
Lots of youngsters received teddy bears as holiday gifts. But native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, received a teddy bear, too. Of sorts.
If you enjoy climbing the cliffs of Bodega Head on the Sonoma coast, keep your eyes out for bears--wooly bear caterpillars, that is. The so-called "wooly bear caterpillar" is reddish, black and woolly and has a voracious appetite much like that of Joey Chestnut.
This is no ordinary calendar. No oceans. No mountains. No deserts. Each month features a "pin-up girl." But these models will never run for Miss America or promote world peace. Only a few have social skills and most are solitary. Take a look at Miss May. She's a sweat bee.
Many beekeepers keep bees, but Norman Gary wears them. Gary, who received his doctorate in entomology (apiculture) from Cornell University, served as a professor at the University of California, Davis for 32 years, retiring in 1994.
The female Greater Wax Moth (Galleria mellonella) is a sneaky creature. She flies around bee hives at night and when the opportunity presents itself--as it often does--in she goes to lay her eggs. The egg hatch into larvae, which munch and crunch just about everything in sight.
