Bug Squad

The Beatles sang "I Want to Hold Your Hand." The elm leaf beetles and their larvae don't want to hold your hand--unless perhaps you're holding a elm leaf that they can eat. A recent walk down the 200 block of Buck Avenue, Vacaville, California, revealed the damage this pest does.

"Sweat bees have earned their common name from the tendency, especially of the smaller species,to alight on one's skin and lap up perspiration for both its moisture and salt content.

National Moth Week ended last Sunday, July 25, but questions linger. A reader asked: "A friend was just telling me that butterflies and moths land differently. She couldn't remember if it was a moth that landed with its wings up or down. It looks like they land with their wings down.

Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. Sometimes you can't see the trees for the forest. And sometimes you can't see the spider at all in a purple forest. Such was the case this week when a tiny white crab spider cunningly figured out the best place to prey was in a flowering artichoke.

If Cinderella were a moth, what species would she be? Maybe this tiny, shimmering one. When we spotted this visitor during National Moth Week on a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, in our pollinator garden, we asked our Bohart Museum of Entomology associates for identification.