Bug Squad

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.

"Vector-borne diseases remain a key threat to human health, wildlife, and plants, in part, due to the multitude of factors that influence their transmission," says biologist A. Marm Kilpatrick, assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UC Santa Cruz.

It's beginning to look a lot like...almond pollination season in California. Almonds usually begin blooming around Valentine's Day, but it's often earlier, depending on where you look or live. Take Benicia, Solano County.

Would you like to design and plant a bee friendly garden? Do you want to attract such pollinators as honey bees, bumble bees and butterflies?