Bug Squad

When you try to attract leafcutting bees (Megachile spp.) to your bee condos, you may also attract something else. Wasps. Bee condos (wood blocks drilled with holes for native bee nests) are a favorite of gardeners and bee enthusiasts.

Have you ever observed how a honey bee swarm finds a new home? How a few of the worker bees turn into scouts, scour their surroundings, and then return to the swarm and dance to communicate their findings? Thomas Seeley has. Many times.

It will be like "old-home week" when Anurag Agrawal returns to the University of California, Davis, tomorrow (Jan. 18) to deliver a seminar on "Evolutionary Ecology of Plant Defenses.

There's a waiting list for Susan Cobey's specialized bee classes at the University of California,Davis. That says a lot about the demand for bee stock improvement and for Cobey's teachings. Cobey, bee breeder-geneticist at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr.

Zombies! What do you think of when someone says "zombies?" Students sitting inattentively in class? A souless body? Or a honey bee infested with parasitic flies? A Zombie, according to Wikipedia, is a term used "to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means, such as witchcraft.