Bug Squad

If you like to photograph and share images of bugs, this is for you. Submissions are open for the 64th Annual International Insect Salon, hosted by the Peoria Camera Club of Illinois.

Seen any monarchs lately? A beautiful male glided into our Vacaville garden late yesterday and made himself at home on our Mexican sunflowers, Tithonia rotundifola. He claimed the patch--"mine, all mine, all mine!"--until a honey bee buzzed by looking for nectar.

If you attended the 2018 campuswide UC Davis Picnic Day and headed over to see the insects at Briggs Hall, home of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, you may have seen an enthusiastic drummer performing in The Entomology Band.

Thar's gold in them thar hills, and then there's that ol' golden dung fly, Scathophaga stercoraria. It's a red-eyed blond that definitely demands your attention.

It was a good day for a praying mantis. It was not a good day for a honey bee. Here's what happened in the "Daily Insect News": a gravid praying mantis, Stagmomantis limbata, ambushed and ate a honey bee on a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, in a Vacaville pollinator garden.