Bug Squad

Just in time for Pollinator Week. The wild bee research co-authored by 58 bee scientists and published today (June 16) in Nature Communications is drawing a lot of attention--and well it should.

It's National Pollinator Week, and Ann Sievers couldn't be happier. She has her olive groves, her California olive oil company that mills what's praised as the "finest of the fine" artisan olive oil, and now...drum roll...bees. Honey bees.

"Generally, butterflies are brightly colored on the top side and have dull colors on the underside. The bright colors are used to attract a mate and the dull colors are used to hide from predators.

Talk about a pollen-packing bumble bee. A yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, displayed quite a heavy load of orange pollen recently as it foraged on hairy vetch in the Hastings Preserve, Carmel, owned and operated by the University of California, Berkeley.

Who's that knocking on our front door? Actually, we didn't hear it knock. It appeared out of nowhere and climbed up to our doorbell. We gingerly placed the jumping spider, Phidippus audax, in a vial to transport it to our backyard bee garden. Phidippus audax, aka P.A.