Bug Squad

Teenagers who dig bugs and wildlife biology will love this! The UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology is again sponsoring two summer Bio Boot Camps: one for youths entering the seventh, eighth or ninth grade this fall, and one for youths entering grades 10 through 12 this fall.

Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you go hungry. Take the case of the huge jumping spider (a female Phidippus audax or bold jumping spider, as identified by Wade Spencer of the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology) hanging out in our Spanish lavender.

If you like writing with light (photography), then you'll probably love capturing images of honey bees spinning like helicopters. In the late afternoon, when the light softens, head over to your favorite Spanish lavender patch.

Let's wing it, they said. And they did. But this event wasn't "winged"; it was well planned and rooted in educational information. Wings? A reference to the flutter of the ever decreasing butterfly wings.

There's gold on them thar roses. No, not the kind of gold found during the California Gold Rush (18481855) that brought some 300,000 folks to the Golden State. These are gold eggs from the multicolored Asian beetle, Harmonia axyridis, that we found on our Sparkle-and-Shine roses last week.