By James A. Bethke, for Let’s Talk Plants! May 2022. Soft scale insects can be quite a pest in the landscape and garden in southern...

Sooty Mold By James A. Bethke, for Let's Talk Plants! March 2022. I gave a presentation a few years back at a community center, which was...

By James A. Bethke, for Let's Talk Plants! November 2021. My first job in the University of California Riverside (UCR) Department of...

By James A. Bethke. The glassy-winged sharpshooter (GWSS), Homalodisca vitripennis (Figure 1), is an insect that was inadvertently...

Ambrosia beetles are a group of beetles in the bark beetle family, Scolytidae. However, there is some argument by taxonomists that the group

Every spring I get calls and emails from people about the great mosquito eaters that are showing up at their lights, windows and doors at ni

In the last article (you can read it here), I mentioned that true bugs have piercing sucking mouth parts. I thought it would be a good idea

In the fall, a common call I receive from friends and neighbors concerns masses of bright red bugs on trees, shed walls or front porches. I’

Many of the insecticide trials that I performed at the University of California Riverside were against aphids, which are one of the most com

When I was a teenager, I collected a whole bunch of very small jumping spiders into small, clear, plastic containers and watched them for ho

While working to fix an irrigation line in my yard I noticed that one of my window screens was slightly damaged. Upon closer inspection, I n

For all my life I knew an awful lot about bugs and other creepy crawlies, so I was confident when a Master Gardener said she had blue centip

This is the first in a series of articles about the insect creatures in our gardens from entomologist James Bethke, well-known for his...

By James A. Bethke. This is the first in a series of articles about the insect creatures in our gardens from entomologist James Bethke,...