Bug Squad

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.

It is not a "pretty sight," as Ernest Hemingway might have said, to see a honey bee stuck like glue--nature's "gorilla glue?"-in the reproductive chamber of a milkweed. It's a trap, a floral trap.

If you're a praying mantis, it's important to start the day out right by meditating, praying, and exercising. Close your eyes and slow your breathing. Be grateful for what you have, not what you want. But it's permissible to dream big, as in a Megachile pluto instead of a Perdita minima.