Bug Squad

There's nothing quite like a cone--no, not an ice cream cone. A purple coneflower. The purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea, family Asteraceae), looks like royalty in the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven at the University of California, Davis.

If you want to attract honey bees in your garden, you can't go wrong by planting catmint (genus Nepeta). Honey bees like the mints. So do cabbage white butterflies, wool carder bees, carpenter bees and hover flies, among other insects. Nepeta is easy to grow.

When you install bee condos--those wooden blocks with holes drilled in them to attract nesting native bees--sometimes you get the unexpected. Like earwigs! Home invasion! Home invasion! We installed two bee condos, each about the size of a brick, in our yard.

What's a picnic without bugs? What's a county fair without bugs? If you meander through McCormack Hall at the Solano County Fair, Vallejo, you'll see plenty of insects.

The declining bee population: Does chlorine in a swimming pool have anything to do with it? Chlorine?