Bug Squad

Several years ago you probably read about the Stanford researchers who discovered that mealworms--larvae of darkling beetles--eat Styrofoam. And if you attended the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology open house on Dec.

Let's consider plant-insect interactions in agro-ecosystems. That's what Katja Poveda, assistant professor of entomology, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., does.

Bee-hold, the eye of a honey bee! Have you ever looked into the eye of a honey bee? Really looked? If you read Norm Gary's popular book, Honey Bee Hobbyist: The Care and Keeping of Bees, you'll see just how marvelous they are.

It's spring and it's loud in the Spanish lavender patch. The girls--the honey bees--are buzzing furiously as they forage among the blossoms, but so are the boys, in this case the mountain carpenter bee, Xyclocopa tabaniformis orpifex.

The University of California, Davis, is the place to "bee" on Saturday, April 7. There's a plant sale at the UC Davis Arboretum Nursery on Garrod Drive from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and there's an open house and plant sale at the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Bee Biology Road.