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Bug Squad

Bug Squad blog image depicts a honey bee sting in action.

Welcome to the Bug Squad blog! The Bug Squad blog was launched Aug. 6, 2008 and is a daily blog (Monday through Friday). It showcases entomologists and the work they do.  The blog focuses on scientists in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, the Bohart Museum of Entomology, Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, the UC Davis Bee Haven, and assorted campuswide events, including UC Davis Picnic Day, UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day, and Bohart Museum open houses. The blog spotlights insects, including bees, butterflies, dragonflies, and praying mantises, as well as arachnids such as jumping spiders and crab spiders. Author and photographer is Kathy Keatley Garvey, communications specialist, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and a longtime journalist and community scientist with two degrees from Washington State University.  She is a member of the Entomological Society of America (ESA) and the Association for Communication Excellence (ACE). Her blog posts and images have won international awards from ACE and ESA and appeared on journal and magazine covers. She shoots primarily with a Nikon Z-8 mirrorless camera, a Nikon D500 and Nikon 800, with assorted macro lenses. Feedspot lists it as one of the top entomology blogs on the Internet. 

Honey bee working the catmint (Nepeta). (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Cooperative Bee

August 5, 2011
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
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.
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Earwig inside a blue orchard bee condo, which has larger holes than one for leafcutting bees. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Home Invasion!

August 4, 2011
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
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.
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This colorful butterfly is the work of 3-year-old Nicholas Razo of Dixon. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

What's a Fair Without Bugs?

August 3, 2011
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
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.
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Flame skimmer munches on a female sweat bee of the genus Halictus. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

No Sweat

August 1, 2011
By Kathy Keatley Garvey
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.
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