Bug Squad

What's a picnic without bugs? Bugs may be uninvited guests at your family picnic, but at the campuswide UC Davis Picnic Day, set Saturday, April 16, bugs are not only invited, but more than welcome. And so are you, your family and friends.

Clean-shaven it's not. Yet it's a cut above. For bees, syrphids and butterflies, the long-blooming Jupiter's Beard make the cut.

It's a jewel of a gift. David Verity of Los Angeles has just gifted the Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California, Davis, with his personal collection of buprestid jewel beetles. He is the former collection manager at the UCLA herbarium.

You're likely to see many species of bees at the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven open house from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 9 on Bee Biology Road, University of California, Davis.

It's a predatory world out there. Newly emerged Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae) are fluttering around the yard--nectaring on lantana, finding mates, mating, and trying to avoid predators. The females are laying tiny yellow eggs on their host plant (Passiflora).