Bug Squad

Ready...set...

Show me the honey! If you're a beekeeper in the United States and folks rave about your honey, then you'll want to enter the annual Good Food Awards event. You'll have a chance to win awards--and bragging rights.

It's early evening and the bees are all over the blanket flower (Gaillardia). But wait, if you look closely, you'll see a tiny sticklike figure on top of a seed head. It's a predator on top his world, scanning the view, feeling the buzz and looking for dinner.

Birds do it...bees do it... You've probably seen the territorial male European carder bees on patrol. They dart through the stems of a nectar treasure, such as bluebeard (Caryopteris 'Blue Mist'), knocking off all floral visitors. They're trying to save the nectar for their girls, perchance to mate.

How times change with the advancement of knowledge. It's long been known that when honey beesas well as other insectsget trapped in the milkweed's pollinia, or sticky mass of pollen, many perish when they are unable to free themselves.