Bug Squad
Article

Who Needs a Bug Fix?

  • November 20, 2025
  • By Kathy Keatley Garvey
Emma Tschida holding pins
UC Davis third-year student Emma Tschida holds some of the newly arrived bug pins in the Bohart Museum of Entomology's gift shop.  She is interning with the Bohart Museum's education and outreach program via the UC Davis course, EDU 142, "Introduction to Environmental Education,"  taught by Professor. Heidi Ballard. 

Who needs a bug fix? Will some land in the stockings hung by the chimney with care?

The Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, is gearing up for the holiday season with new items in its popular insect-themed gift shop.

"We just received a shipment of pins," announced Tabatha Yang, education and public outreach coordinator of the Bohart Museum. Soon to arrive: "new dragonfly T-shirts in blue, olive and brown."

The Bohart Museum of Entomology gift shop, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus, offers a variety of bug-related gifts.

UC Davis alumnus Jakob Lopez wearing "Got Legs?" T-shirt from the Bohart Museum collection.
UC Davis alumnus Jakob Lopez wearing a "Got Legs?" T-shirt from the Bohart Museum collection. This is a trapdoor spider.

Among the  items:

  • Earrings and necklaces (with motifs of bees, dragonflies, moths, butterflies and other insects)
  • T-shirts for babies, children and adults (walking sticks, monarch butterflies, beetles, dragonflies, dogface butterflies and spiders)
  • Insect-themed candy (cricket lollipops)
  • Insect-collecting equipment: bug carriers, nets, pins, boxes, and collecting kits
  • Plastic insect toys and stuffed animals (mosquito, praying mantis, bed bug and others)
  • Posters (Central Valley butterflies, dragonflies of California, dogface butterfly), prints of selected museum specimens
  • Books by museum-associated authors.

All proceeds from the gift shop benefit the Bohart Museum. 

The gift shop will be closed Thanksgiving week, Monday-Friday, Nov. 24-28, and during the winter break, Dec. 22-Jan. 2. 

The Bohart Museum, founded in 1946 by UC Davis Professor Richard "Doc" Bohart (1913-2007), houses a global collection of eight million specimens, plus a live petting zoo (Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks, tarantulas and more) in addition to the gift shop.

Director of the Bohart Museum is professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schindler Endowed Chair of Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and executive associate dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. UC Davis Distinguished Professor Emerita Lynn Kimsey served as the director for 34 years and continues to head the Bohart Museum Society and the newsletter, published quarterly.

All proceeds from the gift shop benefit the Bohart Museum. For more information, access the website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu/ or contact bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.

Former UC Davis doctoral candidate Charlotte Herbert Alberts (now a PhD) designed this hoddie, available in the Bohart Museum gift shop. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garrvey).
Former UC Davis doctoral candidate  Charlotte Herbert Alberts (now a PhD) shows the back of her designed hoodie, available in the Bohart Museum gift shop. It features an insect-toting entomologist riding a tardigrade (water bear). (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey). 

Cover image: Brennen Dyer, Bohart Museum collections manager, staffing the gift shop. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)