Bug Squad

The yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) may be one of the most underappreciated pollinators. You see it buzzing around lavender, lupine, California poppies, mustard and other plants.

First it was the California poppies. Then the lupine. And now it's coreopsis, aka tickseed. It's seasonal blooming at the Campus Buzzway, a quarter-acre wildflower garden planted last fall at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road at UC Davis.

It was an aphid-kind of day. When a ladybug landed on a gaura in our bee friendly garden, it was business as usual. The business: eating aphids. The rose aphids sucking the plant juices from the tender shoot didn't last long. This is why ladybugs are known as "beneficial insects.

The eyes have it. Look at the compound eyes of an insect. Some are colorful, some are drab. But they are all organs that detect light.

If you like to take photos of insects that are as small as a grain of rice, then you'll love--absolutely love--stalking a sweat bee. Sweat bees, members of the worldwide family Halictinae and order Hymenoptera, are so-named because they are attracted to human perspiration or "sweat.