Bug Squad

What better day to deliver a seminar on bumble bees than on Valentine's Day?

Spring doesn't "spring" on the University of California, Davis campus. Sometimes it skitters, scampers and scoots. That's in between the cool and warm temperatures that deceive us--and the bees.

To Boldy Go. UC Davis Chancellor Gary May, a Star Trek enthusiast, coined that theme last year when he launched the university's 10-year strategic planning process. It's aimed at bringing together everyone's bold ideas to propel us to accomplish things we've only dreamed of in the past.

The bumble bee was hungry. She moved quickly from blossom to blossom on a jade plant at the Benicia (Calif.) Capitol State Historic Park, Solano County. As she foraged, you could see her tongue (proboscis) and her trademark yellow face and yellow stripe on her abdomen.

Well, it did what it was supposed to do. It walked. When Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and UC Davis professor of entomology, glanced at a wall near the entrance of the Bohart Museum during a recent open house, she noticed something that wasn't part of the wall.