Sex Amid the Artichokes

What the world needs now is "love, sweet love" and...more ladybugs.

Ladybeetles are our friends. They gobble up aphids and other pests in our garden, and then look around for more. They have insatiable appetites.

Last Friday morning, as volunteers worked in the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, the half-acre bee friendly garden at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, University of California, Davis, the artichoke plants stirred.

Two ladybugs were in the midst of making more ladybugs.

Yes! We need more ladybugs.

During the grand opening celebration of the haven on Sept. 11, we spotted a web-weaving spider eating a ladybug.

One ladybug gone. 

But many more to come.

Volunteers interesting in tending the plants--and maybe spotting a few ladybugs, as well as honey bees, butterflies, dragonflies, sweat bees, praying mantids and a variety of other insects in the garden--can show up at the haven on Fridays at 8:30 a.m.

Melissa "Missy" Borel, program manager of the California Center for Urban Horticulture, UC Davis, and one of the key persons involved in the development of the garden, is coordinating the volunteers. She can be reached at mjborel@ucdavis.edu or (530) 752-6642.

And oh, if you like to capture images of plant and animal life inside the garden, don't forget your camera.