When it ought to be raining, it's raining pink.

They say you can't fool Mother Nature or outsmart Father Time but that's not the case in the UC Davis Arboretum.  A red Japanese apricot, Prunus mume "Matsubara red" glows with absolute radiance in the Storer Garden. It's a early bloomer, but this year it's really early due to the springlike temperatures.

We first noticed it blooming Jan. 5. It's still blooming, and honey bees--probably from the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road--are all over it.

The flowering apricot bears the name "red Japanese apricot," but its origin is China and Korea. It's been cultivated in Asia for some 500 years.

If you've never been to the Storer Garden, you should go. As it says on the Arboretum website: "The Ruth Risdon Storer Garden is a Valley-wise garden, featuring flowering perennials and small shrubs that are especially well suited to Central Valley gardens, including many Arboretum All-Stars, our recommended plants for Valley-wise gardens. It is designed for year-round color with low water use and low maintenance, and features a demonstration planting of roses and companion plants. Educational exhibits highlight the principles of sustainable gardening. The garden is named for Dr. Ruth Storer, Yolo County’s first pediatrician and an avid gardener." 

For most of January, it's been raining pink in the Storer Garden. Now we need the wet stuff. 

It all began with bugs.

That's where it usually begins when your father is an entomologist.

Tom Hammock, son of distinguished professor Bruce Hammock,  of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, learned about insects early in life.  Young Tom caught, sketched and released such insects as dragonfiles, damselflies and wasps. 

"He didn't want to kill them," his father recalled.

Tom took art lessons from noted scientific illustrator Mary Foley Benson, and initially pondered a career as a scientific illustrator. He considered biology as a college major, and finally, landscape architecture. After graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in landscape architecture, Tom studied film design at the American Film Institute and worked on such films as Breaking Bad, Dexter and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 

Tom, who now lives in Hollywood, is better known for his work in the wildly popular young adult and horror genre, including "You're Next!" and "All the Boys Love Mandy Lane." 

Today, however, Tom Hammock is receiving another kind of recognition. He's authored “An Aurora Grimeon Story—Will O’ the Wisp,” an original graphic novel to be published Jan. 28.  Tom and his friend, talented illustrator Megan Hutchison, tell the story in words and pictures about a 12-year-old orphan, Aurora Grimeon, who goes to live with her grandfather on Ossuary Isle, a cemetery island in a southern swamp. Her grandfather, Silver, operates a biological supply business in the basement of a mansion, providing universities with skeletons, venoms and “various other unsavory things,” Tom says. 

"Will o' the Wisp" is based on many of his father's childhood memories of the Deep South. Bruce Hammock, born in Little Rock, Ark., and a graduate of Louisiana State University, beguiled him with fascinating stories about southern swamps and will o' the wisps, his pet raccoon, a biological supply company, venomous creatures, and dermestid beetles, used  to clean animal skeletons.

You'll read about them--and more--in "Will o' the Wisp."

This graphic novel should also encourage young girls to study science and maybe pursue a science career. The main character, Aurora, solves mysteries using both science and hoodoo. 

“Almost no one writes for girls and almost no one writes for girls dealing with girls and science,” Tom said. “Graphic novels for girls are rare and have a tough road in the publishing world.”

Assorted bugs, including butterflies, scorpions, fireflies, mosquitoes, beetles and spiders, find their way into the book. And a tattoo of a dermestid beetle found its way on Hutchison's arm. (For more information on the graphic novel, access ossuaryisle.com, and then check out the trailer, Facebook page, and YouTube video.)

"Will o' the Wisp" is drawing rave reviews, and rightfully so. Already it has been nominated for "best young adult graphic novel" award from the American Library Association.

The Hammock-Hutchison team plans to make this a trilogy.

One online comment, with triple exclamation points, says it all: "OMG!! This was so good. I hope and hope and hope there will be more!!!!"

Looking back, entomologist Bruck Hammock commented: "Tom was always interested in landscape, art, and biology.  However, film and graphic novels are so far from my background, I never saw this as a career path.  In retrospect it is obvious."

And it all began with bugs. 

If you're wondering which bug won "Bug of the Year" in Emmet Brady's Insect News Network (INN) radio poll, it's not the honey bee.

But there is a "bee" in its name. It's the "long-nosed bee fly."

I once captured an image of that curious critter in the Storer Garden, UC Davis Arboretum (see below)

"This nominee is a personal favorite of the team @ The INN for it is bodacious!," Brady wrote on the INN website. He broadcasts INN on Wednesdays from 4 to 5 p.m. and Fridays from noon to 1 on KDRT 95.7 FM, Davis. You can also listen  online.

"Long-nosed bee flies (Bombylius major)  stay low to the ground are highly territorial and are easy to track," Brady wrote. "Unlike the majority of glyciphagous dipterans, the bee flies feed on pollen (from which they meet their protein requirements). A similar trophic behavior occurs among the hover flies, another important family of Diptera pollinators. 

"Watching these flies argue over a flower or a patch of plants is pure enjoyment for the whole family.  While the Bombyliidae include a large number of species in great variety, most species do not often appear in abundance, and for its size this is one of the most poorly known families of insects. There are at least 4,500 described species, and certainly thousands yet to be described.  So if you pay attention and plant the right flowers, you may be able to create a Citizen Science project that is a little Hollywood and a little Natural History Museum.  You might even discover a new species, and then you can name it whatever you want!"

The first runner-up? The honey bee. Interesting that the long-nosed bee fly and the honey bee were "neck and neck" for awhile.

Brady is delighted that the bee fly won because it's a fairly unknown and unusual bug--a bugs that doesn't get much attention.

As for the honey bee, it's "the perennial candidate for the Bug of the Year (BOTY)," Brady says, acknowledging that the honey bee "perhaps the most important insect to human civilization." 

So, bee fly, first. Honey bee, second.

Here's the top 10:

1. Long-Nosed Bee Fly
2. Honey bee
3. Kirk Jellum’s Praying Mantis Sculpture from Burning Man
4. The Monarch Butterfly
5. Madagascar Sunset Moth
6. Ogre-Faced Spider
7. Elephant Hawk-Moth Caterpillar
8. Mirror Spider
9. Salt Marsh Tiger Beetles
10. Orchid Bee

You know which of the 25 nominees for Bug of the Year came in dead last? 

The mosquito! It's "not last but not least..." It's "last and definitely least."

Nobody likes the mosquito.

Apparently they're not parasitized.

The three queen bumble bees (Bombus melanopygus) we found circling our porch lights the night on Jan. 9 appear to be fine.

Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, cared for them at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility from Jan. 9 through Jan. 22. Were they parasitized? Curious minds wanted to know.

We speculated that a parasitoid florid fly, Apocephalus borealis, which lays its eggs in bumble bees, wasps and honey bees, may have accounted for the strange behavior of the queens' "red-eye" flight. Were they "zombie" bees?

Result: No signs of parasitism. No sign of being "zombie" bumble bees. Nothing.

So this morning we released them back into their habitat. Two of the queens buzzed off immediately, while the third lingered.  She foraged on the nearby pansies, considered a nuc box for her home, sipped some honey, buzzed back into the nuc box, foraged on some more pansies, sipped some more honey, and then buzzed back into the nuc box.

Her new home? Maybe. 

However, we still don't know why the three bumble bee queens were buzzing around at night. We may never know.

Thorp said it best: "It was probably the Girls' Night Out."