Bug Squad

If you attend the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house from 1 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 27, you'll learn all about bark beetles but you probably won't recognize the facility. It will be "Bark Beetle Forest Central," says Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator.

The sky darkens. The temperature drops several degrees. A breeze rustles the leaves of the African blue basil. Dogs bark. And off in the distance, a hawk shrills. A partial solar eclipse is about to happen in Vacaville, Calif.

Saturday, Aug. 19 promises to be a honey of a day--in more ways than one! And it gets better! It's National Honey Bee Day or National Honey Bee Awareness Day, launched in 2009 by newly appointed U.S.

Are top-bar beekeeping hives for you? What are their advantages and disadvantages as compared to the traditional Langstroth hives?

A fly, oh, my! On the approval scale, they don't rank nearly as high as honey bees, but some are often mistaken for them. Take the Eristalis stipator, which belongs to the family Syrphidae, the hover flies. It's about the same size as a honey bee and it's a pollinator.