The Bohart Museum of Entomology

05/30/2026

Honey bees can't get enough of the Tower of Jewels, Echium wildpretii.
Wildpretii? Sometimes you feel like addingan extra "t" and remove an "i." It's pronounced "wild-PRET-ee-eye."
A towering, flowering biennnial plant in the family Boraginaceaes, it's named for the 19th century Swiss botanist Hermann Josef Wildpret (1834–1908). Origin: the Canary Islands, Spain. It's predominant around Mount Teide in Tenerife.

https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/tower-red-pollen-blue

05/29/2026

Spiders know where the bees are.
Crab spiders hide in the petals and ambush foraging bees. Orbweavers build sticky, silken webs. Jumping spiders actively stalk or pounce on bees.
The predators and the prey...
I spotted a bold jumping spider in our lavender patch this week and watched it nail a honey bee. It proved too fast for my camera settings, and before I could focus for another shot, it quickly dropped on the ground for a bee lunch.
Both bees and spiders are vital to our ecosystem. Honey bees pollinate our fruits and flowers. Spiders control pest insects, including aphids and flies.
https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/spiders-know-where-bees-are

05/28/2026

https://news.vt.edu/articles/2026/05/cals-vinauger-mosquitoes-DEET.html

Researchers found that yellow fever mosquitoes can learn to associate the smell of DEET with food — a potential vulnerability for the world’s most widely used insect repellent.

05/28/2026

Ever seen a leafcutter bee or carpenter bee heading toward their human-crafted nests, also called bee condos, bee hotels, bee beds, bee houses or bee abodes?

When you visit the UC Davis Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis, you may see them.

The Haven, a half-acre pollinator garden installed by the UC Davis Department of Entomology in the fall of 2009, now includes two bee condos--an older and smaller one with drilled wood blocks; and a newly installed one (with dozens of different-sized holes), a gift from Ambassador Girl Scout Sophie Webb of Davis.

See more at
https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/beds-bees-uc-davis-bee-haven

05/27/2026

Picture this...
You're journaling as a participant in a class at the UC Davis Bee Haven. The garden is not only tranquil but therapeutic. You're writing and sketching about the bees buzzing, the butterflies fluttering, the flowers blooming, and the birds chirping.
That's what took place when Samantha "Sam" Murray, education and garden coordinator of the UC Davis Bee Haven, hosted the garden's first nature-journaling session.
The Haven, a half-acre pollinator demonstration garden installed by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology in the fall of 2009, is located next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, west of the central campus. It's open from dawn to dusk. Admission is free.
Lorie Topinka of Davis, a naturalist, watercolorist and science educator and former assistant director of education at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, led the session.
"The journaling session went really wonderfully!" Murray said. "It was a beautiful time to pause, reflect in the garden, and peacefully appreciate its beauty."
"The participants truly enjoyed it and several expressed interest in coming back if we offer the class again in the future," Murray said. "I also received a few emails from people who were interested in attending but couldn’t make the timing work, so I’m feeling very optimistic about hosting this class again sometime."
https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/nature-journaling-uc-davis-bee-haven

05/23/2026

Sixty Years Later, His Scientific Dream Comes True

More than 60 years ago, a teenage butterfly researcher in Philadelphia conceived of a genomics research project involving the genus Colias, the sulfur butterfly. It never came to fruition because DNA genomics had not yet been invented.

Fast forward to today. The research project that the teen envisioned now appears in a newly published paper, “Temporal Dynamics of Color Polymorphism and Hybridization in Colias Butterflies,” in Evolution, the international journal of organic evolution.

That boy, now 80, is UC Davis Distinguished Professor Emeritus Art Shapiro. “I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime,” he said.

The work was mostly done in the lab of Shapiro’s former doctoral student, Matthew Forister, the Trevor J. McMinn Endowed Research Professor in Biology, University of Nevada, Reno.

The nine-author team includes Shapiro. “As is traditional in such cases, I am listed as the last author, the éminence grise position,” he quipped. “And I did live to see my high-school dream realized. How many researchers can make that claim?”

“The research contributes to our understanding of an evolutionary phenomenon --- introgressive hybridization--that at least superficially seems to defy theoretical expectations,” Shapiro said. “It's gratifying to get far enough below the surface as to be able to see what is really going on, and that's what motivates basic research, after all. We are curious by nature--like cats.”

See more at https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/sixty-years-later-his-scientific-dream-comes-true

05/22/2026

With the Trump administration moving to shut down the USDA's Beltsville Bee Research Laboratory, one of the nation's oldest and most important honeybee research facilities, pollinator scientists and beekeepers are sounding the alarm. The timing is striking: annual bee losses are reaching 60–70% in some regions this year, and the 2026 swarm season arrived 17 days earlier than usual across North America.

After record losses last year, beekeepers report a warm winter has led to bees ‘waking up earlier’ this year

05/22/2026

https://axial.acs.org/environmental-and-sustainable-chemistry/bee-research-roundup-2026

Four studies in ACS journals reveal new ways scientists are working to understand and protect bees, with insights into disease detection, nutrition, pesticide exposure, and brain metabolism.

05/22/2026

What He Discovered After Large-Scale Argentine Ant Removals
The invasive Argentine ant (Linepithema humile), a significant pest in both agricultural and urban settings, is known for its supercolonies that render substantial harm to flora and fauna, including native arthropods, vertebrates and plants.
Enter Professor David Holway of the UC San Diego Department of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution.
Holway, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist, will speak on "Large-Scale Removal of Introduced Ants as a Test of Community Reassembly" at the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology seminar at 12:10 p.m. Wednesday, May 27 in 122 Briggs Hall, UC Davis campus.
His seminar also will be on Zoom. The link: [https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672](https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672...).
"Species introductions are a costly and pervasive form of environmental change that cause impacts including degraded ecosystem services, agricultural disruptions, and species extinctions," Holway says in his abstract. "Surprisingly little information exists, however, regarding the capacity of ecosystems to recover after introduced species removal. The experimental removal of introduced species can also provide unparalleled opportunities to examine community reassembly. Here we use 16-years of data to examine the reassembly of native ant assemblages following the landscape-scale removal of the Argentine ant from Santa Cruz Island, California. This species displaces other ant species, and its removal makes it possible to examine how native ants recover genetic diversity, species diversity, community structure, and ecological function."

See more at https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/what-he-discovered-after-large-scale-argentine-ant-removals

05/20/2026

UC Davis alumnus Benjamin Maples of the California Department of Food and Agriculture Plant Pest Diagnostics Center will present a seminar on Thursday, May 21 at 3 p.m. in the large conference room at the Meadowview Road laboratory in Sacramento. Refreshments will be provided.

He will discuss “Cecidomyiidae (Gall and Wood Midges): Taxonomy and Diversity in Northern California."

The Plant Pest Diagnostics Center is located at 3294 Meadowview Road, Sacramento, CA 95832. There is plenty of free parking.

05/20/2026

Today, May 20, is World Bee Day, and time to "raise awareness on the essential role bees and other pollinators play in keeping people and the planet healthy, and on the many challenges they face today," according to the World Bee Day organizers.

Some 1600 native bees call California "home." (Note that the honey bee is not a native)

Can you identify these bees? (Photos by KKG)
https://ucanr.edu/blog/bug-squad/article/celebrating-world-bee-day