It's St. Patrick's Day tomorrow and time for "The Wearing of the Green."

"The Wearing of the Green" is actually an Irish street ballad dating back to the Irish Rebellion of 1798. The author: anonymous. The color of choice: green. Members of the Society of United Irishmen wore green shamrocks to display their loyalty to the rebellion.

Now take insects. Tomorrow, if you're lucky, you might see some "wearing of the green." But not likely, unless you're visiting a museum and see pinned specimens. The metallic green sweat bees, Agapostemon texanus, aren't out yet in this part of the country. 

Very striking, they are. The females are all green. The males are partly green; their head and thorax are green, but not their abdomen.  

Still, Saturday, March 17 is a good day to think green!

If you've ever watched spiders trap their prey in their sticky webs, you've probably wondered: "Why don't spiders stick to their own webs?"

We've watched countless spiders trap honey bees, syrphid flies and other hapless critters in their webs. The spiders scamper up and down the webs as their victims furiously try to escape.

Now researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, headquartered in Panama City, and the University of Costa Rica have discovered why spiders don't stick to their webs.

The spiders' legs are "protected by a covering of branching hairs and by a non-stick chemical coating," the scientists announced in the journal Naturwissenschaften (The Science of Nature) and on EurekAlert.

Wrote Beth King of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute: "They also observed that spiders carefully move their legs in ways that minimize adhesive forces as they push against their sticky silk lines hundreds to thousands of times during the construction of each orb."

Furthermore, the scientists recorded the webweaving behavior on video. The camera showed that "Individual droplets of sticky glue slide along the leg's bristly hair."

So now one of the most common questions (next to "Why is the sky blue?" and "Why is the grass green") has been answered.

Check out the videos on the EurekAlert website.

Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

The Bohart Museum of Entomology's newly published newsletter, written by Lynn Kimsey, director of the museum and a professor of entomology at UC Davis, reveals the answers. She gleaned much of the information from the University of Florida's Book of Insect Records.

So, what is the heaviest insect? "We used to think that several large beetles, including the Goliath beetle and the titan long-horned beetle were the heaviest," Kimsey said. "But now the giant weta, Deinacrida heteracantha White of New Zealand is unquestionably the winner."

It weighs 2.5 ounces, or "more than a mouse," Kimsey said. "OK, so it's not even one pound, but that's still really heavy for an insect."

Indeed it is.

The longest? A walking stick, Pharnacia kirbyl, found in Malaysia and measuring 22 inches from front leg tip to hind leg tip.

The fastest runner? That would be the Australian tiger beetle, Cicindela eburneola,  recorded running at 5.5 miles per hour.

The fastest flying insect? The male horsefly, Hybomitra hinei Johnson, which reached 89 miles per hour chasing an air rifle pellet.

The loudest? The North American cicada, Tibicen walkeri Metcalf, which can reach 108 decimels--"about as loud as a rock concert or power saw," Kimsey says.

The greatest wingspan? The Central American moth, Thysania agrippina Cramer  (Noctuidae), also known as the white witch. Its wingspan measures up to 11 inches long.

The smallest adult? The mymarid fairy wasp, Dicopomorpha echmeptrygis Mockford. The males are 139 microns or 0.005 inches.

And if you think rabbits are highly productive, think again. Aphids win for the shortest generation time. "Female aphids are essentially born pregnant," Kimsey says. "Cotton aphids and corn aphids can complete a generation in five days at 77 degrees Fahrenheit. This means that one female and all her offspring could produce more than 1 trillion offspring in a season. That is as many aphids as there are stars in five average-sized galaxies."

We need more ladybugs and soldier beetles!

(P.S. If you have an insect question, want an identification or want to become a member of the Bohart Museum Society, contact the Bohart Museum at bmuseum@ucdavis.edu)

Queen bee emerging from her peanut shell-shaped cell. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

The story was not about a red light district or "Ladies of the Night" or even linked to humans.

It was about honey bee queens. "Ladies of the Day," if you will.

The story that raised a few eyebrows involved research titled "Characterization of the Active Microbiotas Associated with Honey Bees Reveals Healthier and Broader Communities when Colonies are Genetically Diverse," published March 12 in the PLOs One Journal.

A team headed by researchers at Wellesley (Mass.) College found that "Colonies with genetically diverse populations of workers, a result of the highly promiscuous mating behavior of queens, benefited from greater microbial diversity, reduced pathogen loads, and increased abundance of putatively helpful bacteria, particularly species from the potentially probiotic genus Bifidobacterium."

Scientists and beekeepers know that a virgin queen, on her maiden flight, will mate with 12 to 25 or more drones gathered in the drone congregration area. It's not immoral; it's just what happens.

The drones mate and then they die. All of them. Or as Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology tells bee associations: "They die happy, with a smile on their face." 

The queen returns to her hive and begins laying eggs, up to 2000 a day in peak season. She'll have enough sperm for the rest of her life, which is usually around two to three years.

This scientific research in the PLoS One Journal is important in that it has led to increased interest in microbial communities and hope for the declining bee population.

Bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey of UC Davis and Washington State University has advocated genetic bee diversity for years. 

"The primary perceived problem for beekeepers is a diminished quality of queens, and recent survey results from beekeeping operations in the U.S confirm this view," she and her colleagues write in a chapter of the newly published Honey Bee Colony Health: Challenges and Sustainable Solutions.

Beekeepers have long complained of "poor queens." 

Cobey and co-chapter authors Walter "Steve" Sheppard of WSU and Dave Tarpy of North Carolina State University write: "The poor queens category encompasses many different problems but most of these reports document premature supersedure (queen replacement), inconsistent brood patterns, early drone laying (indicative of sperm depletion), and failed requeening as indicative of low queen quality."

So the next time you see a headline screaming "immoral" honey bee queens, it was probably written by someone who has no clue about honey bee reproduction.

Or someone trying to be funny...