Ongoing research

If you want to learn about native bees, the place to "bee" on Saturday, Jan. 7 is the Rush Ranch Nature Center, 3521 Grizzly Island Road, Suisun.

Back in March of 1977, ABC launched a TV comedy-drama series titled "Eight Is Enough." It was about a Sacramento, Calif., family with eight children. The journalist/father, Tom Bradford, wrote a column for the fictitious Sacramento Register. "Eight Is Enough!" the father declared. He was wrong.

Dec. 22 marked the winter solstice, the first day of winter. But don't tell that to the western yellowjacket, Vespula pensylvanica. It's supposed to be hibernating, not flying. But there it is flying around--and sipping nectar--from flowering Algerian ivy climbing a fence in Vacaville, Calif.

This is the first post in our new blogging platform created as part of the ongoing improvements and developments from the UC Agronomy Research and Information Center (AgRIC).

Our unseasonably warm temperatures in November yielded 12 unexpected surprises: 12 monarch caterpillars munching away on the tropical milkweed in our pollinator garden in Vacaville, Calif.

It's a bugworthy kind of Christmas.

When you enter the Bohart Museum of Entomology, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, on Crocker Lane, University of California, Davis, be sure to look up. Way up! Way up? Where? Up there, on your left! See them? Above the shelved books. What are they? Insects? Right, they're insects.

A great idea from Ed McFadden of Philmore You can always do something to prevent or correct the Big 4 that seem to strike avocados on a regular basis somewhere in California. Avocados in the back country are right up against areas that can burn easily.

Folks are asking how to donate to the Bohart Museum of Entomology, the world-renowned insect museum that's part of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. There's a donate button on its website. All gifts are tax-deductible.

A UC Davis entomologist who started his career studying insects--and is now focused on human health--played a key role in newly published research that sheds new light on cystic fibrosis, a chronic, progressive and genetic disease characterized by persistent lung infections and inability to breathe...