When you love bugs as a child, what do you want to be when you grow up? For Alaina Michaels it turned out to be . . . The Bug Lady. She’s an entomologist — insect scientist — by formal education, having earned a bachelor’s degree in organismal biology and master’s in ecology and evolutionary biology, both from the University of Arizona.

She’s done research and field work, made presentations, curated museum collections and taught biology. But for now she’s focused on sharing her boundless enthusiasm for insects with the general public.

Waco, meet The Bug Lady.

So you’re The Bug Lady — have you always been into bugs?
I guess it started in my early childhood — I was always naturey, if that’s a word. My mom carried around bags in her purse for me to put stuff in, acorns and things off the ground. I did go on to get bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology.

I say every child is a natural-born entomologist. It usually gets scared out of you, and luckily for me it didn’t. I kind of rediscovered bugs in undergrad and grad school, and then I started teaching. As The Bug Lady, I’m kind of like Ms. Frizzle [of the popular children’s science book series “The Magic School Bus,” franchised into TV and streaming series].

What do you do as The Bug Lady?
I started my ‘Bug Lady’ business in Charleston, South Carolina, where I’d moved after I finished my master’s degree. I took kids outside on field trips, because there’s only so much you can look at in the classroom, right?

I do like teaching, though I didn’t go to school for it, but I think students are able to engage with me because I’m younger. I started an after-school Bug Club at a Montessori school and I’ve worked with home-schooling groups.

Then I have my adult work. I did a lot of work with the Charleston Museum. What I really love doing is adult pinning workshops. Pinning is how you preserve insects, pinning them on boards for display.

I did a lot of events in Charleston with breweries. We had a ton of micro-breweries, and they were always down to host stuff. They would offer a free beer to get people in the door for a pinning workshop. I had not quite a full year of successfully doing that, because we moved to Waco and now I’m starting over again.

‘Bug Lady’ sounds kind of like a quirky old lady. Are people surprised you’re so young, and are you quirky?
I’m 28 and yeah, I’m out there for some people. It’s always fun for me when people get into bugs, because they reach back to the fun they had with them in childhood. They think, ‘Oh, I used to do that as a kid,’ and then they realize they can do it now. I can get really nerdy about bugs. So yeah, I guess I’m pretty quirky.

I think I’ve finally reached the age where people take me seriously. I’ve always been the youngest person in the room, because I graduated early and went right into grad school. And then I went right into teaching college. People would ask me if I was a student when I was going into a classroom or lab. And I would rattle my keys very loudly to show that I worked there as a teacher.

So you continued your love of bugs into your college education. What did you learn?
In undergrad biology we had a pre-med track and an organismal track — bugs and birds and bones — which was the one I was on. I loved going out and doing field work. I did small mammal research, tree research, anything for anyone who’d hire me to work in the field. I worked for Arizona Game and Fish [Department] for a summer as an intern, and really loved that too. I just like being outside and doing research.

I studied abroad in Ecuador my sophomore year and did a small research project there. When I came back, I started working [with bees] in the lab I ended up doing my master’s. It was a coming-home moment, because I hadn’t known what I wanted to do before that.

With your love of bees, how did they not become your research and career focus?
I became very allergic to bees. My father is also very allergic so I kind of knew it was a very real possibility I’d become allergic too. So I switched to museum stuff halfway through my master’s, but I wasn’t able to get to that work during Covid. I never even ended up actually writing it up; I did my master’s thesis on the behavioral studies that I had done earlier.

Studying biology usually funnels into research or teaching. How did you figure out what you wanted to do after undergrad?
I knew I wanted to go to grad school, but didn’t know in what. When I finished my bachelor’s degree, I was leading a team of undergrads on a project for a Ph.D. candidate. I asked my boss if she would hire me to work as a research assistant for the summer because I was just working for college credits. That’s part of why I was able to graduate in three years; I was working for credit instead of money. So she said, ‘Why don’t you just apply for the master’s program? Because I would basically be paying you to do the same thing.’ So I was able to start my master’s the summer right after finishing my bachelor’s degree.

Covid hit in the last semester of my master’s degree. I lost a lot of data on computers, because the campus was shut down, so my earlier research actually ended up being what my thesis was on. I started my master’s doing social insect research with bees.

One biology class in college here. What are ‘social insects’?
Social insects are gonna be your bees — not all but some — and some wasps and ants and termites. They live in colonies. It was a behavioral lab, with all kinds of trials and stuff you can’t imagine. We were super-glueing little tags to bees’ backs. These were bumblebees, not honey bees, so they’re in much smaller colonies. We kept them in wooden boxes with Plexiglas on top of them.

Do you have a favorite bug?
Everyone asks me that! I always default to bumblebees, because that’s what my master’s research was on. I’m quite fond of bees in general.

I have several bug tattoos; I call them my ‘teaching aids.’ I have a honey bee on my leg that a good friend of mine illustrated. I actually got that tattoo long before I became an entomologist, so there’s always been a love for bugs there.

I also have a matching dung beetle tattoo with some grad school friends, ‘The Insect Women.’ And I have two peppered moth tattoos, one black and one white. They’re a classic textbook example of industrial melanism [the process by which animal species evolve darker body colors in response to industrial pollution], so my tattoos highlight my two loves: bugs and evolutionary biology.

You earned your degrees at the University of Arizona. How did you get to Charleston? And then to Waco?
When I finished my master’s in the middle of Covid, my then-boyfriend Sean McBride — now my husband — had already graduated with his master’s [also from the University of Arizona]. He had gotten a job in Charleston and we’d been dating long-distance, so I moved there when I graduated.

My plan was to teach, because Charleston is a kind of a small town and I knew it wasn’t gonna be research. But everything was shut down for at least a year with Covid. I got back into teaching in the summer of 2021, teaching Bio-Organismal Biology and Intro to Biology at Trident Technical College there. In fact, I still teach online for them.

My husband got a new job in Waco, as the head grower at BrightFarms in Lorena. His master’s is in controlled-environment agriculture, essentially greenhouses.

A lot happened last year — I was planning our wedding, we got married, sold a house, moved, bought a house. So yeah, long story short, that’s how we ended up in Waco.

So how’s The Bug Lady launching in Waco?
I launched Bug Lady Official in Waco in May of 2024. So I’m still kind of starting up. I’ve done a couple of events around town between working on our house, teaching online and working at Wine Shoppe on Austin Avenue one day a week.

I did a pinning workshop on preserving insects for Providencia [Urban Retreat Center in Waco]. It’s a really cool community space; they do all kinds of yoga classes and concerts and stuff. We did a garden walk, caught bugs and released them, and everyone got to be a kid for a minute. Then we talked about what we found and pinned beetles that I had brought.

In Charleston, I held adult workshops in coffee shops and breweries; I did one at Cultivate 7Twelve here in Waco before it closed. Those are usually an after-hours thing with wine or beer. I got to drink wine and talk about bugs, and it’s kind of art too. It’s great. It’s amazing to me that people will pay money to do that, because I would do it for free!

I’ve already met a ton of interconnected people in Waco, and I hope this year to hold more adult workshops, but also work more on my kids’ curriculum.

Waco is so connected. I feel like every time I talk to someone about doing bug workshops, it’s ‘Oh, you should talk to this person or that person.’

This may be a really dumb question, but is there a difference between bugs and insects?
The definitions can get really technical, but to common folk and entomologists alike, honestly, the terms are synonymous. Insects are a class of animals, and there are many orders of insects within the class. They have six legs, two sets of wings, eyes and antenna. That’s what you think of as a bug. There’s one order of insects that, if you want to get really technical, are the true bugs, which include stink bug and cicadas. So phylogenetically or taxonomically speaking, there are true bugs, but for all intents and purposes, bugs and insects are the same thing.

What is it you want to educate people about regarding bugs?
Mainly, that they’re not all bad. Actually, most of them are great. Ecologically speaking, they’re the base of the ecosystem and food web. You might hate mosquitoes, but they’re food for other animals. You might hate wasps, but do you know how many plants they pollinate and how many ‘bad’ bugs they eat?

You have a pretty unique job. What are the biggest rewards in what you do?
That’s a really cool question. It’s really rewarding because most people see a bug and say, ‘Ooh, gross!’ I have a rule that we’re not allowed to say ‘gross’ in workshops. When I come to schools, I tell parents they’re not allowed to say that because it literally scares the interest out of kids.

I wish I’d had a me for me when I was a kid. I mean, it’s amazing being able to encourage that interest for kids, instead of what they usually get: ‘That’s gross.’ One of the first things Sean and I did when we started dating was that I showed him how to pin bugs. And he’s like, ‘I used to do this when I was a kid.’ I love him every day because he gets me! He and our five cat children are very welcoming of all the craziness in our house.

Along those same lines, what are the biggest challenges?
I’ve had to tell parents they need to just let go of the ‘ick’ factor, because they’re ruining the experience for their kids. I would come into schools with just the teachers and kids, and they would all hold the cockroaches and be super into it. And then on Family Day, their parents would be like, ‘That’s disgusting.’ And their kid would literally not touch the bugs even though they were so into it just two weeks ago.

When you do workshops, what do you surprise people with most?
I don’t think people are expecting a raving lunatic! People are a little taken aback about how approachable bugs are once they get past the ‘ick’ factor. Everyone gets so into it. They all have their heads down and are working and are like, ‘Oh, I can do this.’ I did some stuff with my parents and younger brother over Christmas, and they sent me videos of them putting their bugs in shadow boxes. But, yeah, I think people surprise themselves with how fun it is to mess around with bugs.

What is your dream career? Would you do anything differently?
Honestly, I’d just like to get my Bug Lady gig to a higher level than I had in Charleston; do regular school workshops and adult programs around town. I love the mentorship with students, and still love my online teaching. It would really just be ramping up what I’m already doing. I’m very lucky to have had success as early as I did. I mean, I even had to file taxes as The Bug Lady!

Your work involves getting up in front of people and talking — are you a natural extrovert?
I’m really not. Mostly what I like to talk about is bugs. But I’ve become more of an extrovert. It shows up in photos. Every event I’ve ever done, the photos show my mouth open and my hands waving, and I can never post them because I look like a crazy person. It’s just me being animated, but it looks like I’m yelling at people.

What do you do for fun?
When I have free time, I work on renovating our house. We’re fixing up a house here that was built in 1931, so it’s almost 100 years old. I’m painting. I’m scouring Facebook Marketplace and thrift stores for weird stuff to decorate with.

Your resume describes you as an artist as well as entomologist and educator. Where does the artist part come in?
I am artsy. I’m always making something. It’s changed over the years; I used to be more into photography and painting. Nowadays it’s more mixed media: papier-mâché, decoupage, making insect or other specimen displays for our house. We live in a tiny museum.

Let me speak to the scientist in you for a minute. As an entomologist, how do you see the global situation of insects? I’ve seen some pretty sobering documentaries on their decline.
We’re actually in a worldwide insect crisis. It’s truly bad. Bees and pollinators are the ones we think about first, because they have a direct impact on humans. Yeah, I’ll get on my little soapbox briefly for that. But honey bees are a domesticated species. We worry about them dying out because we rely on them largely for food, but they’re not the only pollinators out there.

Agricultural monoculture [planting one large crop instead of smaller diverse fields as in the past] impacts biodiversity. Pesticides don’t differentiate between ‘good’ bugs and ‘bad’ ones. We’re in the middle of a really large die-off [of insects] in general.

You might not like bugs for themselves, but they’re the base of our food web. All the plants and wildlife you love depend on bugs.

To schedule a workshop with The Bug Lady for your children’s or adult events, contact Alaina Michaels at bugladyofficial@gmail.com.

Tips to Attract and Protect ‘Good’ Insects

(and really, most of them are!)

Bugs appreciate a lazy gardener. Allow dead plants to sit there for a while. Don’t immediately rake up leaves, because bugs (at least the immature forms) nest in them. When your plants die back in the winter, don’t cut them down right away. A lot of bees and insects lay their eggs or over winter in that kind of debris.

Go native. Let your lawn go a little. Don’t cut stalks back and leave your leaves; that’s the best thing you can do for native plants.

Buy seeds and plants locally. Don’t buy wildflower or other seed mixes off of the internet; most of them are not native to your region. Ask your local nursery about native seeds; they might not carry them, but they probably can get them or know somebody who does.

Butterflies love all things flowering. You don’t have to grow just flowers; you can attract pollinators with flowering shrubs too. Mainly, familiarize yourself with what grows well here. Don’t go buy something at Home Depot that you have no idea what it is.

Get an app. There’s a free app called PlantNet for identifying plants. It’s not perfect, but it can get you partially there, and you can start pulling invasive stuff and replacing it with native plants. Even if it’s just in a little four-by-four plot in your yard, see how many bugs those native plants attract.

–Alaina Michaels, The Bug Lady