Bug Squad

The bees, they're gone. Beekeeper Clay Ford, who owns the Pleasants Valley Honey Company, also known as "Clay's Bees," is devastated. The fast-moving Vacaville Fire, part of the LNU Lightning Complex fires, claimed 73 of his 81 beehives. Gone, millions of bees.

When you observe a monarch butterfly laying eggs on your milkweed--and see the predators and parasitoids circling in anticipation--act fast if you want those eggs to develop into adults. Only about 10 percent of monarch eggs make it to adults, scientists estimate.

It's Thursday afternoon, Aug. 20, and it seems like a good time to run a photo of a Gulf Fritilliary. Because it just is. It is a joy to see, especially when joy seems elusive as out-of-control wildfires ravage California.

So here, you are, a Western Tiger Swallowtail sipping nectar from a Mexican sunflower. You are a Papilo rutulus. And your menu choice? A delicate orange beauty from the sunflower family: a Tithonia rotundifolia. Ah, the sky is blue, the nectar is excellent, and all is RIGHT with the world.

You often hear that foraging honey bees are either pollen specialists or nectar specialists. That is, some leave the hive to collect pollen for their colony, and some to collect nectar. Renowned bee geneticist and biologist Robert E. Page Jr.