Bug Squad

On the last few days of Year 2019, where do you find a foraging honey bee? Well, if the temperature soars to 50 or 55, you might see honey bees slip out of their hives and head for a winter flowering plant commonly known as the "red hot poker" or "Christmas cheer" (genus Kniphofia).

'Tis the season of giving, and the ninth annual UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day, set for Saturday, Feb. 15, needs donors. Make that "urgently needs donor pledges." The pledge deadline of Jan. 6 looms. The free, science-based public event drew more than 4,000 visitors in 2019.

If you want to learn about digger bees and the exciting research that UC Davis evolutionary ecologist Leslie Saul-Gershenz is pursuing, check out the wall display at the Bohart Museum of Entomology.

Suds for a bug? Get out your net! If you collect the first cabbage white butterfly of the year in the three-county area of Sacramento, Solano and Yolo, you'll win a pitcher of beer or its equivalent, compliments of Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology.

Note: This is the shortest Bug Squad blog of the 2972 blogs I've written since Aug. 6, 2008. Santa Came.