Bug Squad

When I last met up with a pipevine swallowtail, it wasn't faring well. In fact, I didn't recognize it as a pipevine swallowtail (Battus philenor), no thanks to it being in the clutches of a hungry praying mantis.

Training for the Olympics? If you step into your garden in the early morning, you might see a male bumble bee sleeping on one of your plants. The females return to their nests at night, but the males don't. They stage slumber parties, aka sleepovers, on your plants.

An anise swallowtail fluttered in and out of the tall anise bordering the banks of the Benicia Marina. A beautiful sight.

When you visit the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, the half-acre bee friendly garden planted next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis, don't expect to see just pollinators. There are predators there, too.

So you're poking around in your garden and you see a bee on a flowering artichoke that you've never seen foraging there before. On sunflowers, yes. On artichokes, no. A closer look--and huge green eyes stare back at you. Definitely not a honey bee (Apis mellifera), although its size is comparable.