Bug Squad

The katydid, as green as the leaves around it, is feeding on a yellow rose. It is paying no attention to the circling honey bees. The bees want nectar, not an encounter with a critter far bigger than they are. The katydid slowly moves from one devastated blossom to a bud.

Hide and seek. She hides 'em and we seek 'em. We've spotted as many as seven adult praying mantids at a time in our little pollinator garden in Vacaville, Calif., but never once have we seen any of them laying eggs. Until now.

Aphids, don't you just hate them? Especially those oleander aphids that suck the very lifeblood out of our milkweed plants that we're struggling to save for monarch butterflies. Just call aphids "The Enemy of the Gardener" or "The Enemy of the Milkweed.

It was not just people who attended the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven open house at the University of California, Davis last Saturday. So did honey bees, carpenter bees, bumble bees, metallic green sweat bees, Gulf Fritillary butterflies and cabbage white butterflies...

Five quilted dragonflies skimming the wall. Eager hands cradling an orchid mantis. Eyes darting toward a hornet's nest. That set the scene at the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology's three-hour open house, themed "Crafty Insects.