There's something so magical and captivating about the metallic green sweat bee. Shouldn't it be yellow? No. Is it a bee? Yes. Does it attract attention? Definitely.
Chemical ecologist Walter Leal, professor and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, and his postdoctoral researcher Zain Syed have done it again. In August of 2008, they discovered the secret mode of the insect repellent, DEET.
A bee is a bee is a bee? Poet Gertrude Stein ("a rose is a rose is a rose") could have said that. True, there's only one species of honey bee in the United States--Apis mellifera, the Western or European honey bee--but there are several races.
The dull brown moth may be dull-looking but as noctuid cutworms they're not. We spotted this noctuid cutworm, soon to be a dull brown moth, last week on a yarrow in the Storer Gardens at the University of California, Davis.
