Insect-Themed Items! Bohart Museum Opens Virtual Gift Shop for Online Sales

Wearing Bohart hoodies are Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart and forensic entomologist (and husband) Robert Kimsey. Both are on the UC Davis entomology faculty. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

It certainly did the insect museum, the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis.

Although the museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, Crocker Lane, is closed to the public due to COVID-19 pandemic precautions, it's gearing up for the holiday season with online sales from the gift shop, which is stocked with insect-themed t-shirts, hoodies, jewelry, posters, books, insect-collecting equipment and other items.  (See gift shop inventory)

“Your support enables us to fulfill our mission of documenting and supporting research in biodiversity, educating and inspiring others about insects, and providing state-of-the-art information to the community,” says Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and professor and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. 

The Bohart Museum, home of a global collection of nearly eight million insect specimens, houses the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity of the state's deserts, mountains, coast, and the Great Central Valley. The Bohart is also the home of a live “petting zoo” (comprised of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas), and the year-around gift shop. 

Here are some of the items available at the Bohart Museum: 

• Earrings and necklaces (with motifs of bees, dragonflies, moths, butterflies and other insects)

• T-shirts for babies, children and adults (walking sticks, monarch butterflies, beetles, dragonflies, dogface butterflies and the museum logo)

• Insect candy (lollipops with either crickets and scorpions, and chocolate-covered scorpions)

• Insect collecting equipment: bug carriers, nets, pins, boxes, collecting kits

• Plastic insect toys and stuffed animals (mosquito, praying mantis, bed bug and others)

• Handmade redwood insect storage boxes and handcrafted pens by Bohart Museum associate Jeff Smith

• Posters (Central Valley butterflies, dragonflies of California, dogface butterfly), prints of selected museum specimens

• Books by museum-associated authors:

  • The Story of the Dogface Butterfly (Fran Keller, Greg Kareofelas and Laine Bauer), Insects and Gardens Insects and Gardens: In Pursuit of a Garden Ecology (Eric Grissell), Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (co-authored by Robbin Thorp), California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (co-authored by Robbin Thorp), Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento Region (Art Shapiro), Butterfly Wish (Steve Stoddard, pen name S.S. Dudley), and multiple dragonfly books by Kathy Biggs
    
    
• Bohart logos (youth tshirts, stickers and patches)

Insect-themed jewelry is a go-to item in the Bohart Museum of Entomology (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Also available are gift memberships and the ability--through donations to the biolegacy program--to name insect species.

The Bohart Museum of Entomology, founded in 1946 and dedicated to teaching, research and service, is named for noted entomologist Richard Bohart, who taught entomology at UC Davis for more than 50 years, beginning in 1946, and chaired the Department of Entomology from 1963-1967.

Said Kimsey: "His publications include three of the most important books on the systematics of the Hymenoptera, including the well-used volume  Sphecid Wasps of the World. His journal publications total over 200 articles. He revised many groups of insects, discovered new host-associations or geographic ranges, and described many new species."

For more information, email the Bohart Museum at bmuseum@ucdavis.edu or access the website at http://bohart.ucdavis.edu.