Bug Squad

Meet Sol Wantz, who serves as president of the UC Davis Entomology Club, a curator intern at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, and an undergraduate student researcher in the laboratory of pollination ecologist Neal Williams, a UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology professor.

We are saddened to hear of the death of Peter "Kim" Flottum, longtime editor of Bee Culture magazine, a friend of the nation's beekeepers and bee scientists, and a close friend of the UC Davis bee community. A resident of Medina, Ohio, Kim died Sunday, Dec. 10 at his home of lung cancer at age 76.

Sleeping with the aphids...that's what this monarch caterpillar was doing. It lived--and quite hidden at that--through the freezing cold, the rain, and the wind. It surfaced today on a milkweed in our Vacaville pollinator garden.

Can a praying mantis catch a monarch? Yes, it can. And yes, it does. It was Sept. 14, 2013. As I approached a Vacaville supermarket, I noticed pink lantana blooming furiously near the entrance, and then, a familiar-looking butterfly quietly sipping nectar. "Ah, there's a monarch," I observed.

News flash: Santa shops at the Bohart Museum of Entomology gift shop at UC Davis. Yes, he does.