Honey Bee.  This bee's important job is pollination.  Although orchardists use professionally managed hives of millions of bees for their crops, sometimes those bees have a big die-off, as happened recently.  Wild bees need good habitat, too, and farmers are beginning to encourage their presence.	Digger Bee.  Adults drink nectar.  Larva feeds on nectar and pollen.  Their nest is constructed in a clay or sand bank with a concealed entrance made of mud.  They often nest together in large numbers.  Sometimes called flower-loving bees because they visit such a wide variety of flowers.
Leaf Cutter Bee.	Robber Fly.
Syrphid Fly on chive blossom.  This is a very welcome visitor.  The larva feeds on soft-bodied insects, particularly aphids, consuming as many as 400 during its development.  The adult, pictured above, feeds on pollen, nectar, and honeydew.	Black Widow male.  Most people are familiar with the female, all black with a red hourglass design on the abdomen, but few would realize that this is her tiny mate (whom she may choose to eat after mating).
Snake Fly	Long-Horned Beetle
Shiny black beetle with red spot	Western Tussock Moth Caterpillar
Bordered Plant Bug	Spider

Web of Funnel Spider.  The architect lies in wait at the bottom of the hole waiting for prey to twang it.  Then it rushes out to capture its booty.	Tarantulas are seldom seen except in the fall, when the males go walkabout to find females.  Females seldom stray far from their burrows.
Cellar Spider, our abundant species, which builds messy, ragged webs everywhere, inside and out.  They cannot penetrate human skin, which is very fortunate for us.	Fishing Spider, captured near the creek and brought to me in a jar.  (The identification is a guess.)
Jumping Spider	Jumping Spider
Unidentified Blue-Green Bee	Spider with Egg Case
Katydid	Help!  Let me innnnnnnn.....
Darkling Beetle (often called Stink Bug).  This is the one that raises its tail when alarmed.  Adults eat dead or live vegetation.  I was surprised to learn that the pupae stage are called mealworms, which are reared commercially to feed birds, fish, and reptiles.	Red Flat Bark Beetle.  This insect can survive freezes even in Alaska by lowering the freezing point of its body fluids. It stops feeding in the fall to clear its body of anything that could allow ice crystals to form.  For good measure, it produces its own antifreeze.
Large Milkweed Bug.  Eggs are laid in milkweed pods.  Adults sometimes takes nectar.  I've seen these bugs crawling on my shed with no milkweed or dogbane nearby.	The Lady Beetle is better known as the Ladybug, and is one of our most beneficial insects. It loves aphids.  The larval stage doesn't look much like the adult orange beetle; the young are darker and corrugated looking.
Orange Dragonfly (Flame Skimmer).  Adults live several weeks or a few months.  They feed on large numbers of mosquitoes, gnats, and other small insects so they are very welcome in my yard.  They like clean water and a perch from which to "hawk" insects.	Damselfly.  Similar to dragonflies, damselflies are smaller and weaker, and hold their wings alongside the body.  Nymphs are carnivorous, feeding on mosquito larvae, among other things. The winged adult eats flies, mosquitoes, and other small insects.
Red Skimmer	White Spider
Red Spider Mites on Clarkia blossom.  They can be a real pest if their numbers are large, as they suck plant juices.  Ladybugs and Lacewings find them tasty.	Red Harvester Ants.  We must have a hundred varieties of ants, but these have a painful bite from barbed stingers.  This species of ant lives primarily in dry, arid conditions. Nests are as much as 15 feet deep with storage areas (granaries) for their collected seeds, primarily from grasses.
Brochymenus?	Plume Moth.  I would never have guessed that this was a moth at all!
Patterned hairy spider	Orange and yellow garden spider
Brown Lacewing	Tachina Fly
May Beetle	Giant Crane Fly
Ten-Lined June Beetle