Bug Squad

Ladybugs--actually "lady beetles" as these insects are beetles--know exactly where to lay their cluster of eggs--where the aphids and other prey are. Thoughtful of the moms, isn't it? Moms are like that. Look on or under your rosebush leaves. Look under your milkweed leaves.

It's a fitting tribute to see the UC Davis Life Sciences Building recently renamed the Melvin M. and Kathleen C. Green Hall.

Remember when UC Davis Professor Jason Bond discovered a new genus of trapdoor spider on a sandy beach at Moss Landing State Park, Monterey County, and launched a naming contest for the species?

Some lost everything: Their homes, their barns, their farm animals, their bees, their livelihoods. The recent wildfire that roared through rural Vacaville, reaching the outer edges of the city, seared the souls of the victims but what's happening now is warming their hearts.

So you're growing milkweed for the first time--or found some milkweed--and you're trying to figure out how to identify a monarch egg. Monarchs lay their eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves--generally--but we've seen them on stems and on the leaf edges.