Bug Squad

The National Geographic just ran a piece titled "Without Bugs, We Might All Be Dead." "There are 1.4 billion insects for each one of us," wrote Simon Worrall in reviewing the book, Bugged: The Insects Who Rule and the World and the People Obsessed with Them by journalist David MacNeal.

One of Buck Owens' signature songs that never failed to please his fan base was "I Got a Tiger by the Tail." The Country-Hall-of-Fame singer, who died in 2006 at age 76, said the lyrics came to him after he noticed a gas station sign advertising "Put a tiger in your tank.

Turning 40 can be mind-boggling. But it will be bee-boggling--all bee-boggling--when the Western Apicultural Society (WAS) meets Sept. 5-8 at the University of California, Davis for its 40th annual conference. So much to do. So much to hear. So much to talk about.

Everybody eats in the pollinator garden. Everybody. The pollinators in our garden in Vacaville, Calif., sip the nectar. They include honey bees, bumble bees, carpenter bees, sweat bees, European wool carder bees, hover flies and assorted butterflies. The predators eat, too.

The Beatle Boys made their mark in Liverpool, but across the pond, specifically at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California, Davis, the real Beetle Boys emergedentomology-driven youth who have made their mark with the Coleopterists Society, an international society devoted to the st...