Bug Squad

Take the creative and collaborative minds of students studying design and entomology at the University of California, Davis. Add an innovative project involving insects.

So here's this Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) clinging to a lavender stem in our pollinator garden. It is all alone--for a little white. Then here come honey bees seeking to forage on the lavender, too. One bee buzzes next to the butterfly's wing. Then it soars up and over.

We remember photographing a young beekeeper, Mikayla Hagan of the Rio Vista (Calif.) 4-H Club, when she delivered presentations at Solano County 4-H events. Yes, 4-H'ers can enroll in beekeeping projects--if a club offers them. And they should! Rewind to the 2012 Solano County Project Skills Day.

"It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble, it's the things we do know that just ain't so."--American humorist Artemus Ward (1834-1867).

It was billed as the second annual Butterfly Summit, hosted last Saturday by Annie's Annuals and Perennials in Richmond. But a yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, foraging on Anchusa azurea (a member of the borage family), apparently didn't like the focus on butterflies.