Rangelands

By Rainer Hoenicke Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) biologist, Jennifer Kubel, presented a webinar on August 26, 2020, on agricultural and horticultural practices that could benefit Monarch butterflies.

It's good to see the University of California's Office of the President award a three-year $900,000 grant to four UC Davis campuses to establish a network of bee researchers and engineers to strengthen honey bee health and crop pollination.

A reader asks: Does the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology have a fact sheet on black widow spiders? Yes! It's among dozens of fact sheets (mostly insects but some arachnids and other non-insects) posted on the Bohart Museum website. All can be accessed and downloaded at no charge.

The UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology is sharing a $900,000 grant from the University of California's Office of the President to establish a four-campus network of bee researchers and engineers to strengthen honey bee health and crop pollination.

In 2020, 9,000 fires scorched more than 4 million acres of California, a record-breaking year, reported Alejandra Borunda in National Geographic.

If you have roses blooming in your yard in the winter--or trying to bloom--check to see if there's a lady beetle, aka ladybug prowling around. Any aphids? A lady beetle can eat as many as 5000 aphids in its lifetime, so they're the good guys and gals in the garden.

A post-fire area of the Sierra Nevada mountains with negligible conifer regeneration. (Joseph Stewart, UC Davis/USGS) In the aftermath of megafires that devastated forests of the western United States, attention turns to whether forests will regenerate on their own or not.

Seen any bumble bees lately in Yolo or Solano counties? If so, and if you photograph the first one of the year, you might win the Bohart Museum of Entomology's contest.

Be on the lookout for the first bumble bee of the year in Yolo and Solano counties.

Learning more about insects ought to be one of your New Year's resolutions. Here's a good place to start: read the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology's Insect Information Sheets.