Bug Squad

For my New Year's resolution, I resolve to turn over a new leaf. Oh, sure, most folks resolve to eat less, exercise more, drink less, read more, stress less, save more, gripe less, and volunteer more. Not me. I'm turning over a new leaf.

Ponce Denis couchard Lebrun compared the butterfly to a flying flower: The butterfly is a flying flower, The flower a tethered butterfly. At the recent Entomological Society of America meeting in Reno, a blue butterfly drew the attention of lepidopterists and photographers alike.

Right out of Champaign, Ill., comes a research story about honey bees on coke. Cocaine. University of Illinois entomology and neuroscience professor Gene Robinson and his colleagues have found that honey bees on cocaine dance more.

'Tis the season for brotherly love, but not in the bee hive. As the honey-gathering season ends and the weather turns colder, the worker bees (infertile females) push their brothers--the drones--out of the hive. Drones are of no use to the colony in the winter. They're another mouth to feed.

I always thought the red-hot poker was primarily red. Not. This one in the Storer Gardens at the University of California, Davis, was mostly yellow. It was Saturday, Dec.