Visitors at the Lepidoptera collection, Bohart Museum of Entomology. In front is Bohart associate Greg Kareofelas; in back, curator Jeff Smith. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Bohart Museum Sets Open House on Saturday, Jan. 11

It's the First of 2025

by Kathy Keatley Garvey
January 08, 2025

Sutton Sauder, 9, and her brother, Elliot, 7, sorting through insect specimens and deciding which ones to look at through a microscope at a recent Bohart Museum of Entomology open house. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey) — Siblings Sutton Sauder, 9, and Elliot Sauder, 7, examining insect specimens at a Bohart Museum open house. Their mother, Candice Sauder, is a surgeon at the UC Davis Medical Center. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

The Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, will host an open house on Saturday, Jan. 11 from 1 to 4 p.m.

The event, free and open to the public, will be a general open house. “It is simply open hours, but on the weekend, when people don’t need to wrestle with parking apps, because parking is free,” said Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator.

The Bohart Museum is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane.

Plans call for a family arts-and-crafts activity in the hallway. Visitors can o hold insects from the petting zoo and use the educational microscopes to see specimens.

Hands cradling a stick insect at the Bohart Museum of Entomology. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Jeff Smith, curator of the Lepidoptera collection, and Bohart associate Greg Kareofelas, will be showing butterfly specimens and answering questions.

The Bohart Museum is the home of a global collection of eight million insect specimens, as well as a live petting zoo, which includes Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas. Its gift shop is stocked with books, t-shirts, hoodies, posters, stuffed toy animals, and insect-collecting equipment.

Director of the Bohart Museum is Professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology; associate dean, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences; and president-elect of the American Arachnological Society.

The Bohart Museum is planning four other open houses through May 18:

14th annual Biodiversity Museum Day on Saturday, Feb. 8 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Bohart Museum (Eleven museums or collections on campus will be participating. See schedule for other venues)
Open house on “Venomous vs.Poisonous” from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, March 2 at the Bohart Museum
Campuswide UC Davis Picnic Day on Saturday, April 12; the Bohart Museum pop-up tent will be at Briggs Hall; the museum itself will be closed
“Insects: Life Stages” from 1 to 4 p.m., Sunday, May 18 at the Bohart Museum

More information is available on the website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu/ or by contacting bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.