Saturday, April 9 was the day a clothespin sprang to life.

Some 200 praying mantis nymphs emerged from an ootheca that Mama Mantis (Stagmomantis limbata) had deposited last summer in our pollinator garden in Vacaville.

We first noticed the camouflaged ootheca (aka eggcase or ooth) on the wooden clothespin in mid-March when we were hanging a freshly laundered dog blanket on the line.

Then on that warm Saturday, with temperatures edging 80 degrees, the clothespin exploded with life. From a distance, the nymphs looked like feathery little ants flicking about.

Mama's babies. 

Looking a lot like Mama, they edged out of the ooth, crawled up and down the clothesline, and then some ascended a metallic quail sculpture, the highest point.

A bird's eye view.

Praying mantis experts say that only a handful will survive to maturity. Yes, they will eat one another, along with other small insects such as fruit flies and aphids. Then they will advance to larger prey.

When Sunday dawned, they were gone.

Mama's babies. 

Amina Harris and her late husband, Ishai Zeldner.

Zeldner, who died in 2018 at age 71, would have been proud to see the family business he founded, Z Specialty Food, develop into a 20,000 square-foot facility at 1221 Harter Way, Woodland.

It was his dream.

It includes a processing plant, The Hive (tasting room for honey and mead, a gift shop and a conference room), an outdoor courtyard and a two-acre pollinator garden.

He particularly would have been proud to see the floor-to-ceiling hive decor in The Hive: the very bee boxes he tended to when he visited his apiary. As many beekeepers do, he wrote his observations on the boxes. You can still see his notations. 

Zeldner worked as a commercial beekeeper and studied beekeeping at UC Davis before founding the Moon Shine Trading Company in 1979. That was the beginning of Z Specialty Food.

But it all began with yellow starthistle. "He loved it so much that he began giving it away to his friends, and quickly realized he was going broke doing so," remembers his widow, Amina Harris, the director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center. 

 His son, Joshua "Josh" Zeldner, who now runs the company--he calls himself "the nectar director"--wrote in an eulogy: "He helped introduce consumers to the wide range of honeys not found in the bear-shaped squeeze bottles at the supermarket." 

"Born in Buffalo, New York, Ishai was a fourth-generation food merchant, and grew up in the specialty food business," Josh wrote. "His family owned Zeldner's Market, which specialized in exotic game. Ishai spent his Saturdays and summers as a kid working in the store, learning how to butcher an array of animals, and, most importantly, how to successfully run a business."

"After college, Ishai spent several transformational years living on Kibbutz Beit Hashita in Israel.  The kibbutz beekeeper chose Ishai to assist him based on his size and strength; neither man had any idea how much it would influence the rest of his life. It was there that he not only learned how to keep bees, but fell in love with beekeeping and honey. He also took the name Ishai. He returned to Buffalo to assist with the management and sale of his family's business at the sudden death of his father. This significant gesture ensured that his mother could afford to comfortably retire."

Ishai's vision was to "bring top quality varietal honey to the table," Josh wrote. And of course, yellow starthistle was "the first one to capture his imagination and his palate."

"Soon after, he married Amina Harris who ran the business by his side in Winters and then Davis. Together they raised two children – Shoshana and Joshua. Ishai taught them both how to appreciate honey straight from the hive and keep bees of their own. Together, Ishai and Amina created a line of nationally-recognized award-winning specialty food products. Today, Moon Shine Trading Company is part of the family of Z Specialty Food, LLC, based in Woodland, California. Z Specialty is known throughout the country for offering over 30 varietal honeys selected from across North America." (See eulogy.)

Fast forward to today. Plans are underway--buzzing, really--for a gala family event.  The Hive will host a Nature Day celebration, free and open to the public, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, April 2. It's a day to emphasize the importance of bees, honey, pollination and conservation. The  public can tour the processing plant, taste honey and mead, explore the gift shop, sit in the outdoor courtyard and visit the pollinator garden. Workshops, games, a display of bee specimens by the Bohart Museum of Entomology, and a photo display of honey bees are planned. Dogs are welcome, too! (See schedule) 

No doubt you've seen a praying mantis egg case, or ootheca, on a tree, shrub, fence or post.

But have you ever seen one attached to a clothespin on an outdoor clothes line?

So here we were Thursday afternoon, hanging freshly laundered dog blankets on the clothes line. 

We grabbed one clothespin after another, carefully fastening Fido's favorite blankets to the line to dry in the 80-degree temperature. 

One more reach....Whoa! What's that?

Can't use that one. There's a ooth on it.

A praying mantis, Stagmomantis limbata, had apparently pinned her hopes to a clothespin. Or maybe that was her PIN number?

"Too funny," commented Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology. "What a weird place to put your ooth."

Our little gravid gal must have climbed the eight-foot-high clothes pole last fall; walked the line (ala Johnny Cash?); and discovered the "perfect place" to deposit her ooth--right above a patch of Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia rotundifola) buzzing with bees and fluttering with butterflies. 

"I've seen egg cases on outdoor furniture, predator guards on duck boxes, on buildings between bricks, trees, and even garden implements like pots, watering cans, and tools," said praying mantis expert Andrew Pfeifer, who now studies horticulture/landscape design at North Carolina University. "It's a Stagmomantis limbata ooth for sure; the hatch rate will be 150 or less."

Oothecas don't usually hatch until around June,  but with the temperatures soaring here in Vacaville, it could happen  "even within the month," Pfeifer says. 

In September 2018, we watched a praying mantis deposit her ooth a few feet from that clothesline.  That gal chose a redwood stake. (See photos on Bug Squad blog). 

Now we wait for the nymphs to emerge...and scramble to eat one another...and prey on bees and butterflies...and the life cycle begins.

Where are the monarch butterflies? They're MIA on the four species of milkweed in our Vacaville pollinator garden  

But milkweed attracts other insects, including honey bees, carpenter bees, bumble bees, assassin bugs, syrphid flies, leafcutter bees, Anthophora (genus) bees, wasps, praying mantids, and butterflies, including Gulf Fritillaries, Agraulis vanillae, and gray hairstreaks, Strymon melinus. And yes, arthropods such as crab spiders and orbweavers visit, too.

On Sept. 19, we witnessed a gray hairstreak laying eggs on the buds of a tropical milkweed, Asclepias curassavica, which we planted in a container with another milkweed, butterflyweed, A. tuberosa. (Yes, we give the monarchs a choice; we also offer them showy milkweed, A. speciosa, and narrowleaf milkweed, A. fascicularis, and we cut back the A. curassavica before the fall migration, as noted entomologists recommend.)

Butterfly guru Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, says this about the gray hairstreak on his website, Art Shapiro's Butterfly Site:

"This is one of the most polyphagous butterflies known, recorded on host plants in many families. Its most frequent hosts in our area are mallows, including the weedy species of Malva; legumes, including Spanish Lotus (Lotus purshianus), Bird's-Foot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus), White Clover (Trifolium repens) in lawns, Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) and many others;and Turkey Mullein (Eremocarpus or Croton setigerus, Euphorbiaceae)." 

So, we mentioned the gray hairstreak laying eggs on the buds of the milkweed. "Is this a host plant, too?"  

"Apparently on the flower buds! Never before recorded--in fact, I have no records on Asclepiadaceae/Apocynaceae at all," Shapiro said. "They lay on Callistemon (bottlebrush) too..."

Meanwhile, update: no monarchs, no eggs. We're still waiting.

But "yes" on the gray hairstreak, Strymon melinus, and "yes" on her eggs.