Mid-Summer Scenes

Greetings, BugFans, Summer has reached its half-way point, and the BugLady has been recording the changing of the guard. The adult lives of most insects are brief – four to six weeks for many, and considerably less for some. Bluet …

Cuckoo Leafcutter Bee

Greetings, BugFans, The story of the Cuckoo leafcutter bee has several moving parts. It starts with the family Megachilidae (of recent BOTW fame), a large and diverse group of solitary bees that includes the leafcutter, mason, and resin bees, and …

A Tale of Two Butterflies – Part 2 – Marine Blue

Note: All links below go to external sites. Howdy, BugFans, A few days after she found an American Snout butterfly (of recent BOTW fame), the BugLady saw this small, pale, worn butterfly ahead of her on the ground. At first, …

A Tale of two Butterflies – Part 1 – the American Snout

Note: All links below go to external sites. Howdy BugFans, The BugLady found two interesting butterflies in mid-June – one, the American Snout, is a fairly regular visitor from the South, and the other (see next week’s BOTW) puts in …

Early Summer Scenes – The Dragonflies

Greetings, BugFans, Spring was long and cool, an arrangement that the BugLady usually applauds (she savors every little step into spring, and she doesn’t like it when the phenology of six weeks is squished into one or two). But this …

Early Summer Scenes

Howdy, BugFans, Well, the sun has solsticed, and it’s all downhill from here. Our pre-Christian, Germanic ancestors, who were more intimately attuned to the rhythms of the sun, correctly celebrated the winter solstice, aka Yule (which may have come from …

Closed for June – Invasion from the Far, Far East

Note: All links below go to external sites. Howdy, BugFans, Wisconsin’s Invasive Species month and the BugLady’s month off are drawing to a simultaneous end, and she will be back “live” next week. Not surprisingly, her search for random insects …

Closed for June – Biological Control of Invasives

Greetings, BugFans, The BugLady’s favorite cautionary tale about biological control of invasive species concerns rats that jumped ship in Hawaii in mid-1800’s and invaded the sugarcane fields (sugarcane being, of course, an introduced agricultural crop and a mainstay of Island …

Closed for June – An Immigrant Tick

Greetings, BugFans, Today’s episode is a bit of a potpourri. As if we needed another tick, here’s an account of a newcomer. So many invasives, so little time – just in time for gardening season, an earthworm review: here and …

Closed for June – Invasive Spiders

Note: All links below go to external sites. Howdy, BugFans, Remember – the BugLady is on vacation for the month of June, hoping for the rain to stop and the temperatures to rise (a little bit – she gets brain-dead …