Bug Squad

Africanized honey bees arrived in southern California in 1994 and are expanding north.

Remember the massive "buzz kill" in Wilsonville, Oregon back in June 2013 when more than 50,000 bumble bees died in a Target parking lot after coming into contact with pesticide-treated flowering linden trees? Ironically, it occurred the first day of National Pollinator Week.

Think back to the first time you spotted a Red Admiral butterfly. You probably admired it and said something like "Ooh, look at that!" That may be how its name originated; someone corrupted "admirable" to "admiral." And mistook "orange" for "red.

The Zika virus is "scarier than we initially thought." So screamed a recent USA Today headline in a quote attributed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

If you've never seen the "teddy bear bee," keep an eye out for it. A fuzzy golden bee with green eyes, it's the male Valley carpenter bee (Xylocopa varipuncta). Last Friday we saw it foraging in the half-acre Haagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road, University of California, Davis.