Bug Squad

If you like honey and want to learn more about it, the place to bee on Sunday, Nov. 20 and Saturday, Dec. 10 is the seventh annual Z Specialty Food Open House. It's scheduled from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in its warehouse, 1250-A Harter Ave., Woodland.

When the Bohart Museum of Entomology hosts its open house, Uninvited Guests: Common Pests Found in the Home," from 1 to 4 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 19, "invited" guests will meet "uninvited" pests.

Worried about uninvited guests gathering in your home without an invitation or your permission? You know, the ones with six, eight or more legs? Now you can find out all about them. And maybe, just maybe, you can kick them out.

So here we are, planning a long-awaited 113-mile trip from Solano County to Natural Bridges State Park, Santa Cruz, to admire and photograph the overwintering monarch butterflies. Then it happened.

Let's hear it for the honey bees. Right now they're scrambling to gather nectar and pollen from the blanket flower, Gaillardia. You could say they're blanketing the flower. When resources are scarce in the fall, the blanket flower, in the sunflower family Asteraceae, draws them in.