Bug Squad

When 4-H beekeeping project leader Ettamarie Peterson of the Liberty 4-H Club, Petaluma, meets with her youth group at the beginning of the 4-H year, she tells them NOT to buy bees, equipment or bee suits. It's NOT because they're unnecessary. She supplies them.

If you like your insects long, slender and delicate, and resembling a flying neon needle, the damselfly is for you. Who can resist watching them and photographing them? The common blue damselfly or Northern Bluet (Enallagma cyathigerum) is as thin as a needle, a jeweled blue needle.

Well, that's something you don't see every day: a leafcutter bee sunning itself on a milkweed leaf. The narrowleafed milkweed, Asclepias fascicularis, beckons monarch butterflies (the host plant), aphids, praying mantids and assorted other insects, but once in a while, you'll see a leafcutter bee.

Western spotted cucumber beetles know how to hit the spot. Make that "multiple spots." These beetles, Diabrotica undecimpunctata, are agricultural pests that feed on roots, seedlings, flowers and foliage. And they can transmit diseases.

It was a tough day for a Tettigoniid on a Tithonia. When a katydid (Tettigoniid) encountered a crab spider on a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, in our garden, the katydid didn't last long. The spider administered a venomous bite and it was all over.