Bug Squad

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.

"How are the bees doing this year?" That was the most commonly asked question at the California State Beekeepers' Association (CSBA) booth during the California Agriculture Day on Wednesday, March 22 on the west lawn of the State Capitol.