When we think of pollinators, we usually think of honey bees, bumble bees, carpenter bees, syrphid or flower flies, and butterflies. But wait, blow flies can be pollinators, too.
The crab spider is a clever and skillful hunter. Last Sunday we spotted a camouflaged crab spider (family Thomisidae) lying flat on a sedum. The spider's pink and white abdomen blended so well into the pink and white blossoms that you couldn't tell where the abdomen ended and where the flower began.
There's a killer in our midst, and a chemical ecologist will tell us all about it. The killer: thousand cankers disease. The victim: native black walnuts. The speaker: Steve Seybold.
If you have a bee hive, you most likely have mites. Varroa mites, those blood-sucking parasites that latch onto the brood and also thrive on the adult bees, can weaken and destroy a hive.
Our catmint is in mint condition. So is the cat. The catmint (Nepeta mussinii) is a member of the mint family (Lamiaceae or Labiatae). It's a perennial with two-lipped blue or blue-violet flowers that blooms from spring through fall. It grows so well that it can become invasive. Just like the cat.
It wasn't an itsy bitsy spider. And it didn't climb up the water spout. It was climbing all over the tower of jewels, ready to stalk and pounce on prey.
When the ants come marching in, Andrea Lucky will be right there. Ant specialist Andrea Lucky, who will receive her doctorate in entomology on June 10 from UC Davis, will speak on the evolutionary history of ants on Wednesday, May 12 in 122 Briggs, UC Davis.
Honey bees are wild about the wild radish. It's not an invasive weed to them. You'll see bees foraging among stands of wild radish along roadsides, pastures and other disturbed areas.
When the Antioch Charter Academy, a middle school in Contra Costa County, toured the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis on Tuesday, May 4, they learned all about honey bees and native bees.
