The purple jersey beetle is a poisonous insect that does not threaten anyone

What kind of insect is this?

This is a beetle that cannot fly. The insect lacks wings. The elytra are shortened, located close to the base, and slightly splayed to the sides at the back. The common beetle is a black or bluish-dark beetle; there are also almost azure-colored specimens. Regardless of color, the body of the beetle has a pronounced metallic tint. When you look at them, you get the impression that their body is made of metal and painted with enamel.

According to the entomological classification, they belong to arthropods, are representatives of Coleoptera and are part of the blister family.

Blister Habitat

For a long time, the habitat of blister beetles was limited to the countries of Europe, Asia and Africa. Insects prefer open steppe and semi-desert areas, and due to their heat-loving nature, the bulk of these beetles are found in tropical and subtropical zones. At the moment, these bright bugs can be found on all continents except Antarctica.

Schiffer's blister.

Within Russia, different types of blister beetles live in the following areas of the country:

• South-Eastern regions;
• European part of the country;
• Southwestern and Eastern Siberia;
• Primorye;
• North Caucasus.

How big are these insects?

The Mike beetle, a photo of which you can see in the article, is very small. The length of its body varies from 15 to 40 millimeters.

Females are larger. They are easy to distinguish not only by their length, but also by the shape of their abdomen. In females it is extremely swollen, disproportionate to the body, large and protruding. Males are much neater and more aesthetically pleasing in appearance, but also smaller by at least a third.

Benefits and harms

Adult males feed on the green parts of plants; females do not cause much harm with their vital activity. The larvae are parasites. Some species are beneficial - they reduce the number of locusts and other crop pests. Others cause damage by destroying bee colonies.

The pest can be found on any plant, since these creatures are omnivores. They lead a diurnal lifestyle. They gnaw leaves, shoots, flowers. Beans, potatoes, mustard, turnips, and grain crops are destroyed in gardens.

Interesting!

In the past, medicinal preparations - diuretics - were prepared from blister beetles to increase potency. Canceled due to side effects. The drugs negatively affected the functioning of the liver, kidneys, and nervous system.

Blister beetle
The bites of the blister beetle are not dangerous to humans, but the substance that the insect secretes when it senses danger is poisonous. A burn, blister or abscess instantly appears on the skin. Special treatment of the bite is required using local antiallergic, antihistamine, and anti-inflammatory drugs.

Meeting blister beetles is dangerous for cats and dogs. If swallowed, intoxication develops. Kittens and puppies die without qualified help.

How long do these insects live?

The Mike beetle lives very little. Their entire life span is until reproduction. The male dies immediately after mating. The female dies after laying eggs.

The female of this insect manages to lay from a couple to ten thousand eggs. She lays eggs in peculiar nests. These are not particularly deep holes, going 25-30 millimeters into the soil. She makes the masonry in the form of a heap and sprinkles it with earth. The female of this beetle never starts arranging a new nest without making sure that the previous one is completely complete.

Features of larval development

The first instar larvae, after emerging from the earthen burrow, climb onto flowering plants, where they wait for bees. They cling to hymenoptera insects, which carry the larvae to their own nest. Once in a bee's home, the first thing they do is eat the egg. The larvae grow and develop at the expense of food reserves prepared in the nest. The victims of parasites are solitary bees of common genera: Osmia, Anthophora, Nomia. They build nests and lay eggs in the ground. Violet T-shirts live nearby, the development of which is impossible without their owners.

The body of triungulina is flat, yellow, size 1.7-2 mm. The head has pointed sickle-shaped jaws and eyes. The abdomen ends in two long setae. The legs are long, the paws have sharp claws that allow them to stay on the bee's body. After molting, the legs shorten and the eyes disappear. The larva eats honey reserves, grows and molts several times. Some parasites pupate in the bee's nest, but most leave it and burrow into the ground to a depth of 10 cm.

By autumn, the larva turns into a “false pupa”, characterized by a durable chitinous cover. In this state, she does not feed and enters winter diapause. A dense cocoon protects against drying out, climatic influences and mechanical damage. In the spring, a larva emerges from it and turns into a pupa. After a few days, the imago emerges from it.

How do these insects live?

The Mike beetle cannot boast of an interesting lifestyle. Insects of this species feed on plants or the remains of other living organisms and can also lead a parasitic lifestyle. The larvae are released from the eggs 28-40 days after laying. The egg ripening time depends on the soil temperature. The higher it is, the faster a new generation of beetles appears.

At the larval stage, the Mike beetle likes to parasitize inside bee hives. Mikes in the larval stage have a tendency to travel. They crawl onto flowers, grasses, and shoots of bushes. They cling to bees and bumblebees, moving with them both to their hives and simply over considerable distances.

Interestingly, the Mike beetle does not die until mating. That is, finding itself alone, at a distance from its relatives, the insect lives for a longer time.

Blister lifestyle

Adults of most blister species feed exclusively on food of plant origin. Some representatives are aphages and do not need food at all. The diet of adults may include:

• leaves;
• young shoots;

• inflorescences;
• flower nectar.

The larvae are mostly parasites . Blisters most often lay their eggs near the home of a potential victim, which could be:

• bees;
• wasps;

• grasshoppers;
• locusts

Larval transport

Small blister beetles on a flower.

Thanks to its well-developed limbs, soon after birth the larva climbs up plant stems and waits for a suitable candidate. As soon as a potential “breadwinner” appears on the horizon, it quietly attaches itself to his body. The unsuspecting victim delivers the dangerous parasite directly to its nest, where the larva descends from its “transport” and begins to consume food. Her diet may include:

• oviposition;
• larvae;
• food supplies stored by adult insects for their offspring.

Are these insects dangerous?

Common mace is poisonous. At the slightest danger, the insect secretes an oily, viscous liquid. These secretions contain cantharidin, an organic non-protein poison.

In addition to T-shirts, carriers of this toxic substance are:

• barbel - red-breasted puffer, carpenter, Ussuri relict;
• Spanish fly;
• other beetles of the blister family.

On average, the insect body contains up to five percent pure cantharidin in its total biochemical composition. This substance is quite dangerous. When taken orally, a person requires 40 to 80 micrograms of pure cantharidin per kilogram of body weight to be fatal. This variation is explained by the varying degrees of susceptibility of the human body to the toxin.

The most famous types of blisters

The blister family includes more than 2000 species, but only about 100 of them can be found within Russia. The most common types are:

In Bashkiria, summer residents found a rare poisonous beetle

The day before, on May 9, a family of Ufa residents who were vacationing at their summer cottage in the village of Okhlebinino in the Iglinsky district of Bashkiria contacted the Mkset editorial office.

- Imagine, we found a strange beetle, yesterday in nature, today on our site. It turns out to be a very poisonous insect, listed in the Red Book. They even poisoned people with it, it’s terrible. Where did we get this from? – said Ekaterina Kislitsyna.

Meanwhile, residents not only of Bashkiria, but also of other regions of the country have recently begun to report the appearance of this insect, the full name of which is “black blister beetle”. Recently, blogger Konstantin Vervekin published a large and detailed post about this beetle.

The body of these representatives of the Coleoptera order contains up to 5% cantharidin - an organic compound that is dangerous to the health and life of people and animals, which can cause blisters when it comes into contact with open areas of the skin, and if it gets inside the body - severe irritation of the mucous membranes, bleeding, vomiting, damage to the liver, kidneys, cardiac activity and central nervous system.

The common tankard has a fairly wide habitat and is distributed in many countries of the world. The varieties of these insects living in Russia (purple (blue) T-shirt and black T-shirt) are listed in the Red Books of certain regions of our vast country - due to their small numbers and as endangered. In particular, in the Red Books of Moscow, Moscow, Leningrad, Rostov, Ryazan, Vologda and Nizhny Novgorod regions, Mordovia and Tatarstan. Now they will apparently be included in the Red Book of Bashkiria.

Insects are found in meadows and steppe zones, in open spaces near places where wild solitary bees live, with which the life of bees is closely connected - insect larvae parasitize wild bees (travel with them and feed at their expense). They cannot live off domesticated honey bees, although they can sometimes cause trouble for apiary owners by getting into the hives with the bees.

Source

ladybugs

Even a child knows these cute, bright beetles. And here is something that would be useful for summer residents to know about them: ladybugs and their larvae are more active than many in destroying aphids, scale insects, and copperheads on the site. An adult insect eats several dozen aphids a day, and babies eat ten times more.

Thanks to this, ladybugs are literally necessary in every area, especially in gardens and flower beds, where aphids become a real scourge, destroying the leaves of apple trees, pears, roses and other plants.

Ladybugs wake up in the spring, actively feed and reproduce throughout the warm period, and with the onset of cold weather they look for shelter. To attract these insects to your site, you need to provide them with houses. For this purpose, both decorative industrial shelters and hollow stems tied in bunches, sprinkled with peat or sawdust, laid in secluded corners of the garden can be used.

Imago lifestyle

Clumsy insects with a thick body stay on the ground and crawl along stumps and herbaceous plants. Adults feed on cereals and love clover, dandelions, buttercups, anemones, and violets. If they find themselves near fields with vegetables, they damage agricultural crops. Beetles can be found in various biotypes: steppes, meadows, forest edges. To continue the life cycle, it is important to have nearby open areas suitable for solitary bees to settle.

Information. On a hot day, the beetles hide under the leaves; their soft abdomen is buried in the ground to avoid drying out.

Interesting fact. In case of danger, the purple T-shirt falls to the ground and pretends to be dead. An additional defense mechanism is an oily, unpleasant-smelling liquid secreted from the joints of the limbs and abdomen.

In regions where the area of ​​meadows is shrinking, construction is taking place, plowing is taking place, grass is being mowed, and the number of purple t-shirts is decreasing. Due to the lack of wings, beetles cannot move long distances in search of new habitats.

Reproduction

Mating is the finale of the life of males; after transferring the seed to the female, they die. For laying, a place is chosen close to a colony of solitary bees. The female digs a hole in soft soil. In one clutch the number of eggs reaches 1000 pieces. The female makes 2-3 separate burrows with eggs. After this, it also dies. The larvae appear after 30-40 days.

The blister family is characterized by hypermetamorphosis. This type of insect development is transitional between complete and incomplete metamorphosis. The first instar larvae, called triungulins, differ from the older instars. External differences are related to lifestyle. Triungulins are actively moving, looking for hosts for further development. Once in a bee's nest, they moult and turn into short-legged, worm-like parasites that feed on honey. Before true pupation, insects go through a “false pupae” stage.

Lacewings

Lacewings, sometimes mistakenly called lacewings for their delicate yellow-green wings, are not important in themselves in protecting the garden from insects, but their larvae are the real heroes of this war for the harvest. Each larva destroys up to one and a half hundred aphids, scale insects, small mites, etc. per day. Moreover, over the summer, 2 generations of lacewings hatch, each of which actively seeks food for 3 weeks.

Lacewing larvae are quite cunning - they hide from ants that pose a danger to them, disguising themselves as aphids.

Preventive measures

The shelves of kitchen cabinets should be wiped with a soda or vinegar solution once a week. Lemon juice with water or an aqueous solution of lavender essential oil are good for these purposes. It is recommended to store cereals, flour, and pasta in tightly closed plastic or iron containers.

It is better to treat new wooden furniture with an insecticide immediately after purchase. It is important to monitor the level of humidity in the apartment, regularly ventilate the room, and wash the floors and walls. When buying bulk products in a store, carefully inspect them and check for the presence of bugs and their larvae. You should not buy second-hand furniture and clothes, even if only for a short time.

Simple ways to get rid of bugs

There are a number of other ways to get rid of bedbugs. A garden hose is best used at the beginning of a beetle infestation. Using a garden hose will wash them out of the yard but will not be a permanent solution to the problem, although it may be a deterrent.

You can use other insects: praying mantises and most types of spiders are natural opponents of toy soldiers. Of course, this can lead to another type of insect problem once the soldier beetle and its colony are gone. This can also disrupt the natural ecosystem of the yard.

You can catch the bugs using jars and then release them into or outside your yard. Vacuum is the easiest method in the early stages. It is necessary to vacuum and then dispose of the vacuum bag by throwing it in the trash, or even burn it. You can use boiling water to remove insects from sidewalks, walls, or soil.

Perhaps the best solution to the problem of keeping soldier beetles away from your home is to remove them from their habitat; most often, insects take root in maple and ash trees. Of course, this is not always a practical or effective measure. In addition, bedbugs may still be approaching your home from other nearby trees.

Let's summarize

Don't forget the rules of behavior in nature:

• be extremely careful if you find poisonous insects - leave this place immediately;
• wear protective clothing: covering parts of the body; mosquito repellent; not bright items of clothing;
• treat exposed skin with insecticides;
• if you are bitten by an insect, immediately treat the wound with antiseptics and drink an antiallergic drug;
• if the wound festers and does not go away for a long time, consult a doctor;
• and of course, information rules the world: study the “enemy”, find out where he lives, what he breathes.

Maybe you think the list is not complete? Mark in the comments who you forgot to include in the top of the most dangerous insects living in our country.

Small Khrushchak

The small flour beetle has a brown or red body color and causes considerable damage to the food supply of a person in an apartment. It is widespread in Russia and Ukraine, where it often causes spoilage of grain in granaries, mills and other places where bulk products are stored.

The red-brown beetle is smaller in size (up to 3.6 mm), but it loves to settle in various food supplies in the apartment: flour, nuts, dried fruits and other plant fruits.

The larva of the small beetle has a flat shape and a length of up to 7 mm, the body color is yellow-brown (light or dark shades), the head is flattened. The body is covered with hairs and ends with 2 spines. The pupa is painted light yellow, and its body is shiny and completely naked. The development cycle of the flying black beetle is 20-120 days, and the growth rate directly depends on the amount of food and living conditions.