You've heard of hot dogs on a stick, s'mores on a stick, and maybe shrimp or lime pie on a stick, but have you ever heard of a “Mantis on a Stick?”

"A praying mantis on a stick?" you ask. 'Isn't the mantis the predator that grips its prey on its spiked forelegs? How do you get a mantis on a stick?"

Well, you cut a piece of paper to resemble a mantis head, draw its compound eyes, affix a popsicle stick to its mouth, add pipe cleaners for its antennae, and voila, there you have it, a "Mantis on a Stick."

That was the family arts-and-craft activity at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house on "Praying Mantises," held last Sunday afternoon, Aug. 27. 

While scientists discussed mantises and showed specimens to the guests, youngsters headed over to the arts-and-crafts table. (Later they would engage with the scientists.)

Bohart intern Melody Ruiz, a third-year entomology major at UC Davis, staffed the arts-and-crafts table. She invited children, youths and adults to create a mantis. They could change the compound eyes to smiling eyes, sorry eyes,  frowning eyes, and other facial expressions. 

Soraya Qaqunah, 4, of Davis, looked at the box of crayons, selected her choices, and began to color the eyes. Her brother Elias Qaqunah and his friend each chose to turn a mantis head into a tarantula head after admiring the nearby Mr. Curly, the Tarantula. Elias decided his tarantula should be yawning. "How to you draw a yawn?" he asked. 

Meanwhile, Julietta Millsop, 3, of Davis, and Maya Lee, 4, of Woodland eagerly finished a Mantis on a Stick. 

Ruiz, who coordinates the arts-and-crafts activities at the Bohart Museum open houses with Tabatha Yang, the Bohart's education and outreach coordinator, delights in helping others and sharing her knowledge of insects. "I've always had a curiosity for insects as they play such a big part of the world we share," Ruiz said. "I love being able to talk about the wonders of entomology with anyone who visits the museum; it makes me happy being able to be connected to a memory of learning something new. Studying entomology allows me to work in an environment where you truly learn something new every day."

The Bohart's next two fall open houses are from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 23 and on Saturday, Nov. 4. The September open house is themed "Household Vampires." It will feature fleas, ticks and bed bugs. The November open house theme is "Monarchs."  It will showcase monarchs, milkweed, scientists and research. All open houses are free and family friendly.

The Bohart Museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis, houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, plus a live petting zoo and an insect-themed gift shop, stocked with t-shirts, hoodies, books, posters, jewelry, collecting equipment and more. Professor and renowned entomologist Richard Bohart (1913-2007), a member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology (now the Department of Entomology and Nematology) faculty for more than 50 years, founded the museum in 1946.

It was a "Magical Mantis Kind of Day" when the Bohart Museum of Entomology hosted an open house last Sunday afternoon, Aug. 27, on praying mantises.

• Tabatha Yang, the Bohart Museum's education and outreach coordinator, wore a green mantis costume to greet guests and show them the Madagascar hissing cockroaches and stick insects in the live petting zoo
• Guest Kevin Murakoshi of Davis  (UC Davis alumnus) gifted the museum with intricate origami mantises that he crafted from "mantis green" paper--one sheet per mantis.
• Guest Ian Alexander Levin of Sacramento displayed his enlarged images of mantises, including one of a mantis eating a bee that drew "oohs" and "aahs."
• Skylar Primavera, who studied praying mantises while attending UC San Barbara (bachelor's degree in biology, 2020) displayed a live mantis as well as life-cycle models (ootheca to the adult), and answered questions about the predatory insect.
• Sol Wantz, UC Davis entomology senior and president of the UC Davis Entomology Club, displayed a European mantis that she borrowed from a UC Davis garden

Guests viewed display drawers of both native and non-native mantises. At least 9 species of mantises in California, according to one display.

Five are native:

• The Arizona or bordered mantid (Stagmomantis limbata)
• Bistanta mexicana
• California mantid (Stagmomantis wheeleri=S. californica)
• Litaneutria ocularis=Litaneutria obscura
• Small gray mantid (Litaneutria pacfica)

Four are introduced:

• Chinese mantid (Tenodera sinensis)
• European mantid (Mantis religiosa)
• Mediterranean mantid (Iris oratoria)
• South African mantid (Miomantis caffra)

Meanwhile, Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum, and Brennen Dyer, collections manager, fielded questions from the crowd. The Lepidoptera crew of Jeff Smith (curator of the Lepidoptera collection), Greg Kareofelas and Brittany Kohler showed guests assorted butterfly specimens collected world-wide.  Bohart intern Melody Ruiz, a third-year entomology major at UC Davis, staffed the family arts-and-crafts activity on mantises.  

The next two fall open houses, free and family friendly, are from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 23 and on Saturday, Nov. 4. The September open house is themed "Household Vampires." Think fleas, ticks and bedbugs! The November open house is on monarchs. Think iconic monarchs, milkweed and research.

The Bohart Museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis, houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, plus a live petting zoo and an insect-themed gift shop. The insect museum was founded in 1946 by Professor Richard Bohart of the UC Davis Department of Entomology (now the Department of Entomology and Nematology).

(Editor's Note: Tomorrow's Bug Squad blog will feature the creative kids and the creative staffer at the family arts-and-crafts activity.)

When Frank Loesser (1910-1969) wrote and composed "Luck Be a Lady" in 1950, he wasn't thinking of a butterfly.

But when we spotted this Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) in our garden this week, we knew she was lucky.

A predator, probably a bird, chunked out parts of both wings, but that didn't seem to bother her as she sipped nectar from a Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifola).

If anything, her close encounter made her even more alert to her surroundings.

The orange, brown and white butterfly, so named because of its impressive colors and display, is found throughout much of the world. It migrates seasonally. Scientists say it can fly 100 miles per day at nearly 30 miles per hour.

Butterfly guru Art Shapiro, UC Davis emeritus professor of evolution and ecology who has been monitoring the butterflies of central California since 1972 and posts his research on Art Shapiro's Butterfly World, says that "Apparently the entire North American population winters near the US-Mexico border, breeding in the desert after the winter rains generate a crop of annual Malvaceous, Boraginaceous and Asteraceous hosts. The resulting butterflies migrate north."

"In good years (lots of desert rain) they may do so by billions, interfering with traffic and attracting the attention of the media," Shapiro relates on his site, noting that "2005 was one of the biggest Painted Lady years in history--perhaps the biggest, but how can we know? At Sacramento at the height of the migration butterflies were passing in one's field of vision at the rate of about 3 per second! 2006, by contrast, was a La Nina year with very little rain in the desert. The butterflies apparently gave up trying to breed there and flew north in February. They tried to breed but mostly were unsuccessful due to bad weather, resulting in only very sporadic individual sightings of their progeny in May. Northward-migrating Painted Ladies are provisioned with yellow fat and are reproductively immature."

Hail to the Painted Lady...

Folks in Georgia have more than Georgia on their minds.

It's about this yellow-legged hornet detected in Savannah, Ga., the first live species of Vespa velutina reported in the United States.

UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, and the 2002-24 president of the International Society of Hymenopterists told us late last week: "This isn't the murder hornet. It's a slightly smaller species--Vespa velutina. It's about the same size and I think biology as the already established Vespa crabro, which has been in the southeastern U.S. for more than a century. Anything is possible as far as introductions go, but I think it's unlikely that it could establish since it is also native to regions with wet summers. I suspect it got into Georgia through one of the ports. Hitchhiking in/on cargo containers is too easy. Savannah takes in an estimated 4.5 million cargo containers annually. Its actually astonishing that more things don't make it in."

Kimsey, known for her expertise on wasps and other Hymenoptera, is accustomed to fielding questions from the news media. Praveena Somasundaram of the Washington Post interviewed her for an Aug. 18 piece, Invasive Hornet with "Reputation for Targeting Honey Bees Seen in U.S.

Wrote Somasundaram: 

Though it is too early to tell how the yellow-legged hornet was introduced and whether it will be able to establish itself in the ecosystem, its presence in the state could have a “potentially huge” impact on Georgia's beekeepers, said Lynn Kimsey, an entomology professor at the University of California at Davis.

Bee colonies could be at risk if more yellow-legged hornets are found in Georgia. A honeybee colony is “basically a giant waffle of protein” for yellow-legged hornets, Kimsey said.

“There's so much food there,” she said. “So for a colony of these big hornets, honeybees would be fair game, and that's their reputation.

The Smithsonian Magazine, one of the first to call attention to the insect, headlined its news story, "Invasive Yellow-Legged Hornet Spotted in the United States for the First Time," and added a subhead, "The insect, detected in Georgia, can snatch bees from the air while hunting, posing a threat to native pollinators and agriculture." 

The Georgia Department of Agriculture posted on its website: "The yellow-legged hornet poses a threat to honeybees and other pollinators in our state. These pollinators play a significant role in Georgia's agriculture industry, the state's main economic driver, and it is imperative that these invasive pests are tracked and eradicated. We are working with USDA APHIS and UGA to trap, track, and eradicate these pests and will continue to assess the situation as new information becomes available and allocate additional resources as need."

The insect, native to Southeast Asia, was accidentally introduced to Europe, Japan and South Korea. It was first detected in France in 2004--probably arriving in pottery boxes. It then became established throughout most of Europe. The hornets build egg-shaped nests.

According to Wikipedia, the hornet "significantly smaller than the European hornet. "Typically, queens are 30 mm (1.2 in) in length, and males about 24 mm (0.95 in). Workers measure about 20 mm (0.80 in) in length.^[2] The species has distinctive yellow tarsi (legs). The thorax is a velvety brown or black with a brown abdomen. Each abdominal segment has a narrow posterior yellow border, except for the fourth segment, which is orange. The head is black and the face yellow."

In its native range, the hornet mainly hunts Apis cerana, the Eastern honey bee. Bees there suffocate the hornet by balling it. 

Will the Western honey bee, Apis mellifera, be able to cope if the yellow-legged hornets become established? The threat is real.