Bug Squad

She probably eats a lot of mosquitoes.

Picture this during National Pollinator Week: five monarch caterpillars and assorted honey bees sharing tropical milkweed. It was love at first bite. Or love at first sip. The 'cats kept munching and the bees kept foraging. Neither species seemed interested in the other.

She didn't know it was National Pollinator Week. If she had, she would have paid it no mind. She just knew that this was some fine pollen as she struggled to fit inside the strawberry blossom. The honey bee, Apis mellifera, is like that: determined, decisive, and mission-bound.

It's all about insect courtship rituals and intimacy, or what entomologists sometimes call "insect wedding photography." The Bay Area-based SaveNature.

Hats off to the communicators affiliated with the University of California, Davis, and the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) for their international awards.