Friday 16 August 2013

Friday at the Flicks - Pollen Beetles

It took a while to track down the identification of the tiny black beetles which arrived on the sunflowers in large numbers:


The pollen beetle, probably Meligethes aeneus, is particularly attracted to almost any yellow object and can be found on oil seed rape and sunflowers amongst others.

7 comments:

  1. I've been racking my brains trying to remember what they were called.
    Excellent macro video.

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    1. Thank you Adrian. Spent ages searching for 'small black beetles' to no avail. Wasn't till I tried 'pollen beetle' I found it.

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  2. color-specific beetles! interesting!

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    1. It is TWG though the majority of wild flowers do seem to be yellow anywhere round here.

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  3. Great close-up video! I think yellow flowers must be appealing to many creatures. I have noticed that yellow pansies, for example, seem to have a sweeter scent. Also have noticed squirrels eating yellow crocuses. Hmmm... food for thought. Liked the music that accompanied your video as well. Thanks for the welcome back :)

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    1. Thank you Glo. Blackbirds seem to destroy yellow crocuses first - maybe they have more insects in the flowers. Purple Planet have a nice selection of royalty free music for use with videos.
      http://www.purple-planet.com

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  4. We used to get lots of these in the keel of our sweet pea flower which made them quite a nuisance when you wanted flowers indoors. They are supposed to fly out off the flowers if they are put in a darkened place with a window as a light source. The idea being they will fly to the window. We haven't had as many for a few years now so maybe they are sticking to the old seed rape fields.

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Thank you for visiting. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Any comment, or correction to any information or identification I get wrong, is most welcome. John

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