Bug Squad

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?

Gotta love those dragonflies in the family Libellulidae. The Thunderbirds of the insect world, they perform amazing aerial maneuvers as they skim over water, catching mosquitoes, knats, flies and other undesirables on the wing. But oh--occasionally they nail a pollinator.