Ongoing research

Think back to the first time you spotted a Red Admiral butterfly. You probably admired it and said something like "Ooh, look at that!" That may be how its name originated; someone corrupted "admirable" to "admiral." And mistook "orange" for "red.

The Zika virus is "scarier than we initially thought." So screamed a recent USA Today headline in a quote attributed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

If you've never seen the "teddy bear bee," keep an eye out for it. A fuzzy golden bee with green eyes, it's the male Valley carpenter bee (Xylocopa varipuncta). Last Friday we saw it foraging in the half-acre Haagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road, University of California, Davis.

If you attended the 141st annual Dixon May Fair, held May 5-8, and saw the honey bee display in Madden Hall, you probably heard the buzz. In keeping with the theme, "Buzzing with Excitement," bees buzzed in the bee observation hives as fairgoers singled out the queen bee, worker bees and drones.

You don't have to crane your neck to see the crane flies. They're everywhere. They're zigzagging around your yard, bumping into walls and windows, landing on your screen door and fence, and clustering on your porch lights, all the while searching for mates. They're in your garden, home and garage.

Elise Gornish, Josh Davy, Travis Bean, and I are testing the use of sheep for management of late-season invasive annual grasses. This trial is taking place at five sites at the Hopland Research and Extension Center two with barb goatgrass, two with medusahead, and one mixed.

Head on over to the haven on Friday, May 6. That would be the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven. The occasion: It's National Public Gardens Day, as declared by the American Public Gardens Association, and UC Davis is participating. The haven, located next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr.

Some outstanding news was just released yesterday at the annual AUVIS Xponential 2016 conference in New Orleans, which will likely make it much easier to fly sUAS for educational purposes.

Forget the polls that claim to know who will win the U.S. Presidency. Let's hear it from the insects, namely the woolly bear caterpillars that populate the cliffs of Bodega Bay. They may know.

Forget about the birds and the bees. Just think about the bees. The 141st annual Dixon May Fair, California's oldest fair, is "Buzzing with Excitement," and that's the theme of the fair, which opens Thursday, May 5 for a four-day run.