The larva of the May beetle and the mole cricket in differences. Mole cricket larvae: what are their features
Mole cricket larvae begin active life with the arrival of real spring warmth. They overwinter, buried to a depth of about 2 meters or in dung heaps. The closer it gets warm, the higher the larvae rise to the surface of the earth. At a ground temperature of about +12 degrees, they already feel very comfortable.
In the month of May, the process of laying eggs begins. It is characterized by the fact that sexually mature individuals emerge from their hiding places at night to the surface of the earth and go in search of sexual partners. After mating, the female is busy making a nest for herself. At a depth of about 5 centimeters below the surface of the soil, it digs many underground passages. The main nest is located at a depth of no more than 20 cm.
The female lays at least 400 eggs, which ensures the necessary level of survival of the species. The development of eggs and the birth of mole cricket larvae occur under certain conditions. This requires high humidity, high temperature and air access.
It is important to know! The larva of the mole cricket has fundamental differences compared to the larva of the cockchafer. It is quite easy to identify pests by external signs. The larvae of this pest prefer heaps with manure, while within their nest they destroy plants that block access to sunlight to the nest. May beetle larvae prefer to be in well-groomed areas of the garden.
The sizes of these insects
The size of skin beetle larvae varies from half a millimeter at the stage of emerging from the egg to 9-12 mm before pupation in some species. Of course, the maximum body length of a larva depends on the size of the adult beetle: in species whose imagoes have a body length of 2-3 mm, the larvae grow to 4-5 mm, and in species whose beetles grow up to 8-9 mm, the larvae can reach up to 12 mm, and taking into account the length of the posterior hairs - 15.
In the photo, for example, it is noticeable that the unique “tail” of the skin beetle larva is not inferior in length to the body size of the larva itself:
In any case, the larvae of skin beetles are small and never reach the length of even a domestic cockroach. In part, such small sizes help them remain invisible to people for a long time, and due to this it is safe to grow and even turn into beetles and leave their own offspring even in completely clean and well-kept apartments.
Iodine from cockchafer larvae. Harm to plants
These beetles love to gnaw and eat leaves of trees and garden crops. They like flowers, as well as ovaries at a young stage of development. Sometimes trees can be completely bare after their intervention.
The larvae of the May beetle, or beetle, cause the greatest damage to garden crops and garden plants. Their length is about 5 cm on average, they can be seen in a state called sickle-shaped, they are quite plump, white in color, but not pure. They undermine the roots of garden plants with their powerful mouthparts, and are even capable of chewing them.
At a young age, the larvae do not cause any harm to the garden, because at this time they feed exclusively on grass and humus. But when they reach 2 years of age, they eat the roots of plants, which subsequently tend to wither and often die. The larvae like tubers, as well as planted strawberries and seedlings. The peak of their gluttony and, accordingly, harm occurs at 4 years of age.
May beetle larva
The pest can find food quite easily. Well-developed vision and sense of smell help him in this. With its strong legs, the cockchafer manages to dig the soil without difficulty.
According to all physical laws, it is believed that the Khrushchev cannot even rise into the air, but, despite everything, it even flies at a speed that is quite good for an insect. Even its solid weight does not interfere with this.
Main differences
There are a number of differences that help determine what kind of living creature a given larva represents. For example:
- The mole cricket larva does not go through the worm and pupa stage, so it is born as a fully formed brown pest, although over time the color becomes darker. It takes about 2 years for the pest to develop. At the last stage, wings and genitals appear.
- The cockchafer larva is a white caterpillar with clearly visible rings. Gradually increasing in size, the caterpillar grows up to 6 cm in length and seems to curl into a ring. The larva has 3 pairs of legs that grow in the front of the body. The head is brown in color and has a well-developed mouthparts. The main differences need to be known, since many beetles have similar larvae, but they do not harm agricultural crops.
Important point! The larva of the cockchafer develops in the ground for 3 years, and for the first 2 years it does not pose a particular threat to plants. In the 3rd year of its development, it becomes such a voracious creature that it eats everything that comes in its way.
If there are few larvae of both the May beetle and the mole cricket, then they are not able to cause much harm to garden plantings. But if there are a lot of them, then it can turn into a real disaster.
May beetle larva is harmful. Harm from the cockchafer and ways to combat it
The May beetle (Khrushchev) is a common pest of green spaces. In late spring they can often be seen on trees. During the flight, the insect buzzes loudly, and by this sound they can be easily identified. Adults feed on tree leaves in gardens and parks. The larvae of the cockchafer eat the roots of plants, which leads to their death.
A three-year-old larva can completely destroy the root system of a young tree in an hour. Considering that one female beetle lays up to 70 eggs, the appearance of these insects on the site threatens the almost complete destruction of green spaces.
Description of the insect
We all know what a cockchafer looks like since childhood. Some saw them live, and others saw them in pictures for the fairy tale “Thumbelina.”
The body of the beetle is barrel-shaped, black or brown-brown, elongated at the rear. The length reaches 3.5 - 4 cm. It is distinguished from other insects by antennae with long bristles.
The larva of the cockchafer, also known as the furrow beetle, has a thick white body, bent in the middle, three pairs of legs and a large brown head.
The beetle's pupa is more similar to the adult, but with shorter wings.
May beetle reproduction and growth stages
The development cycle of the cockchafer lasts five years. At the end of May, adult individuals crawl out of the ground to the surface, females mate with males and lay about 70 eggs in the soil to a depth of 15-20 cm. After this, the females die. After a month and a half, small white larvae appear from the eggs. They spend four years in the ground, continuously feeding on plant roots. In the summer of the fourth year, the larva turns into a pupa, and a year later adults emerge from the ground.
What harm does the cockchafer and its larva cause?
An adult cockchafer does not have time to cause much harm, as it only lives for about two months. The larvae cause significantly more damage to plants.
If plants begin to wither one after another for no apparent reason, most likely there are larvae living under its roots. They can be found by digging a hole in the ground about the depth of a spade bayonet.
How to distinguish a cockchafer larva from similar ones
Before you start fighting the larva of the cockchafer (Melolontha sp.), you should make sure that it is she and not other insects. The most commonly confused larvae are:
- Rhinoceros beetle (Oryctes nasicornis L.). Lives in compost heaps. Golden bronze grass (Cetonia aurata). Also prefers compost heaps. Stag beetle (Lucanus cervus L.). Lives in dead wood.
Below is a comparative photo of the larvae of the cockchafer and the bronze beetle:
If you look closely, you can see the difference between them. Differences also exist in the places where larvae accumulate. Thus, immature individuals of the cockchafer feed on the roots of plants, and accordingly live there. Bronze larvae have weaker jaws, live in compost heaps and feed on dead organic matter.
Below is a comparative photo of rhinoceros beetle and deer larvae:
May beetle larvae are not found in compost heaps, as they feed only on living roots.
Folk methods of combating the cockchafer and larvae
In order to successfully fight the cockchafer, you need to know how it behaves:
- In the early morning, beetles are usually inactive and can be easily shaken off the trees onto a specially laid out litter. The collected pests are then destroyed. In the dark, the beetles flock to the light, so they can be collected in light traps. It must be prepared in advance - any shallow container is coated with a sticky substance and a light bulb is placed in the middle. In the evening the trap is placed outside. Not only chafers stick to such traps, but also cutworm butterflies, whose caterpillars destroy cabbage, beetroot and green tomatoes. Starlings also will not refuse a fleshy delicacy, so a birdhouse on the site is necessary. The ground under the trees is sown with white clover or lupine. These plants enrich the soil with nitrogen, which repels the larvae. The ground under the plantings is sprayed with an infusion of onion peels or a pink solution of potassium permanganate.
Ordinary hedgehogs are big fans of larvae. If a thorny family settles nearby, the pest population will begin to decline rapidly.
Larvae are also collected manually while digging the soil.
Chemical control agents
All of the above control measures are effective only with a small number of pests. If your plantings are rapidly dying, it’s time to turn to chemicals to get rid of the cockchafer. How to use them, and what drugs they include:
- "Zemlin." Refers to insecticides of contact and intestinal action. The active ingredient is diazinon. It affects soil pests, maintaining its effect for two months. It is applied to the soil during planting and in the fall for preventive purposes after harvesting. “Nemabakt”. The drug is biological and completely safe for use. It populates the soil with a predatory nematode and special bacteria, which enter the larvae’s body through the respiratory organs and destroy it. Then the nematode leaves the empty shell and goes in search of new victims. In winter, these worms fall into suspended animation, and with the arrival of warmth they come to life again and begin to feed. The product is diluted with water and applied to pre-moistened and loosened soil. “Pochin”. Analogue of "Zemlin" based on diazinon. The drug is available in the form of granules, which increase its duration of action. It is applied to the soil early in the spring and is effective throughout the entire season. “Aktara”. A product containing the active ingredient thiamethoxam. A day after application to the soil, all pests die. Can be used at any time of the year and in any weather. High humidity is not an obstacle and does not affect its properties. “Antikrusch”. Available in the form of a concentrated emulsion with two active ingredients - imidacloprid and bifenthrin. The product has a prolonged action, high efficiency, is resistant to precipitation and is not addictive. It acts on both adults and larvae. “Bazudin”. The drug based on diazinon has a long-lasting effect and is economical: a 30-gram sachet is enough to treat 20 square meters. The product is mixed with sand in a liter jar and added a little under each bush or with a tuber when planting. “Vallar”. The drug is diluted in water and the roots of the seedling are dipped into it before planting. Thus, the larva quickly dies when eating the roots.
To effectively combat the cockchafer, it is necessary to use a set of plant protection measures. It is even better to combine protective measures with preventive ones. Thus, there is a high probability of bringing larvae onto the site along with manure, because in the first year of life they feed on unrotted organic matter. Before adding manure to the beds, it is necessary to sift it to prevent pests from entering. If the beetleworm is found in neighboring areas, it is better to replace the manure with compost or liquid nettle fertilizer, which is guaranteed to be free of larvae. Compliance with all these measures will help protect your crops and preserve the harvest.
Characteristic behavioral feature
In addition to the abundance of hairs on the body, the larvae of skin beetles differ from insects with a similar body shape by their very high mobility. In those moments when they catch your eye in the apartment, they are practically not in place for a second - each larva with an unexpected body shape and “pubescence” crawls, turns, bends and unbends, crawls over various obstacles with remarkable agility, and sensing danger, it accelerates even more. This agility contrasts greatly with her body shape, especially for humans who are accustomed to various worm-like creatures moving slowly and sluggishly.
It should be noted that skin beetle larvae are not always so mobile. Where they are safe and close to food, they are quite economical in expenditure of energy, and simply eat, rest, and sometimes make primitive cocoons of their web. They crawl quickly and are especially active where they are in an unsafe place, mainly when moving in search of food along routes that are new to them.
For example, here is a video of a house beetle larva crawling in an open place on fabric:
Actually, it is in such movements that skin beetle larvae are most often noticed. While they do not crawl far, they are not particularly visible - they spend most of their lives in secluded crevices, cavities, hidden from the eyes of people, forgotten boxes and bags of food, in cabinets that have not been opened for a long time, inside furniture. Here, if they are noticed, it is during rare or random repairs, inspections and cleaning. Most often, their hiding places are so inaccessible that it is difficult to find them in an apartment even with targeted searches, when it is well known that they live somewhere here.
This, by the way, is one of the reasons why it is not always possible to get rid of them. And you definitely need to get rid of them...
Potassium permanganate from Khrushchev. Lethal agents - tobacco, potassium permanganate and mustard
These simple remedies, which are found in every home, will help get rid of many pests and plant diseases in the garden. We already wrote about laundry soap, iodine, brilliant green and chalk in the last issue. Read how and what you can use it for:
Tobacco dust
Tobacco dust is not expensive at all and is a universal remedy for garden and garden parasites. One package lasts a long time. If you sprinkle tobacco dust on flowers (carnations, gladioli, peonies, delphiniums, irises, dahlias), you can get rid of cruciferous flea beetles and sucking insects. It is enough to scatter 30-50 grams per 10 square meters.
Decoctions and infusions of tobacco dust from moths, various caterpillars and sawflies are also widely used. The infusion is made simply: a kilogram of tobacco dust is mixed in 10 liters of water and infused for a day. Then it must be strained. The resulting infusion is diluted with water 1 to 3, 40 grams of liquid soap are added. The resulting solution can be used to spray gooseberries, cherries, cherries, currants, plums, etc. against the pests mentioned above. You can spray until the very beginning of harvest.
Potassium permanganate.
In addition to the fact that the seeds are kept in a weak solution of potassium permanganate before planting, it also has many uses. For example, a dark pink solution of potassium permanganate can fight gray rot on strawberries and powdery mildew on various berry bushes. To get rid of beetleworm and wireworm, before planting potatoes, it is enough to spill the prepared beds with a solution of potassium permanganate in a ratio of 2 grams per 10 liters of water.
Mustard powder
Got enough slugs in the area? – sprinkle the places where they accumulate with mustard powder and they will disappear. An infusion against sawflies and gooseberry moth helps a lot. It is prepared very simply: dissolve one hundred grams of mustard powder in 10 liters of warm water and let it brew for a couple of days. Strain, dilute with another 10 liters of water and add 80 grams of liquid soap. Spray the affected plants with the resulting solution.
This solution will also help get rid of bedbugs, aphids and thrips from cabbage and various root vegetables. If you treat fruit trees with it 15-20 days after flowering, you will protect the trees from leaf-eating caterpillars and codling moth caterpillars.
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Pest butterflies and their caterpillars
Butterflies that seem cute at first glance and flutter around the garden can also turn out to be malicious pests. Whiteflies, cutworms, whiteflies, hawthorns, moths, moths - their caterpillars (butterflies do not have a larval stage) can significantly damage your crop. Some of them specialize in legumes, others prefer cruciferous or rose beans, others willingly settle on gooseberries and currants, and still others choose cereals. And they all actively gnaw on young parts of plants (leaves, roots, fruits), choosing for this, as a rule, the night time.
To reduce their harmfulness, measures will have to be taken. Namely:
- promptly destroy weeds (especially flowering ones) that can become a “home” for butterflies;
- during the period of egg laying and caterpillar hatching, regularly deep loosen the soil between the rows, and also do not forget about deep autumn digging of the site;
- during the mass summer, use bowls with beer or jam to catch butterflies;
- to repel insects, place pegs in the garden, wrapped at the ends with rags soaked in undiluted birch tar;
- spray the plantings with a water-tar solution (for 10 liters of water - 2 tablespoons of tar and 20 g of soap shavings) or wormwood infusion (for 10 liters of boiling water - 300 g of crushed wormwood, 1 cup of wood ash and 1 tablespoon of liquid soap – leave for 5-6 hours);
- use biological products (for example, Lepidocide or Bitoxibacillin), release Trichogramma predators into the area;
- in case of mass damage, use chemicals (Decis, Arrivo, etc.).
Biological products for Khrushchev. Biological method of protection
This is a modern way of getting rid of insect pests through the use of biological preparations. Such preparations may contain natural enemies of the pest - nematode worms, pathogenic bacteria or fungi.
For cockchafer larvae, it is better to use preparations containing nematode eggs that feed on the larvae. Among the drugs used are Nemabact, Etonem-F.
They are applied to the soil according to the instructions for use, with morning and evening watering at an ambient temperature of 10-26 degrees above zero, preferably at high humidity. The proportion when preparing the working solution is 1:100, since biological products contain up to 5 million nematodes per 1 g.
After entering the soil, nematode larvae are inactivated in the absence of a host insect. Thus, nematodes can exist without food for more than 2 years. When an insect appears nearby, the larvae become active and invade the insect’s body. After penetrating the insect, the nematodes release symbiotic bacteria into the host's hemolymph. As a result of intensive proliferation of bacteria and damage to internal organs by nematodes, the insect dies after 1-3 days. Nematodes reproduce and grow inside the insect, after which, within 8-15 days, thousands of new invasive larvae capable of infection emerge from the insect’s body.
In addition, you can use the drug "Boverin" (contains live spores of the fungus Beauveria bassiana), if the number of larvae in the soil is not very numerous. Or biological insecticides “Fitoverm” and “Aktofit” (based on aversectin), if it is necessary to spray the product over the vegetative parts of plants.
Preventive actions
You can protect your site from the invasion of voracious creatures in a fairly simple way, by digging deep into the site 2 times a year. Using this method, it is possible to destroy nests, as well as destroy larvae that are in the last stage of development.
Anyone who uses regular manure as fertilizer should know that it is best to apply it in the fall. Once scattered around the garden, in the spring there will be no living mole cricket eggs left, as they will die from frost. When manure is applied in the spring, a person infects his plot with his own hands.
There are other ways to protect your area from these parasites. For example, planting beds with garlic, as well as using garlic cloves when planting garden crops, can significantly reduce the scale of infection of the area. Flower beds with marigolds, chrysanthemums, calendula, etc. have the same effect.
Pest control in the garden plot should be comprehensive. Here it is very important to combine various methods of control, including the use of chemistry. Often, traditional recipes do not help to completely get rid of pests, so insecticides have to be used. Chemicals not only quickly destroy pests, but are also able to protect the area from them for a long time.
Rules for storing rotted manure
To ensure that rotted manure does not become a real danger for the site, you should use the basic rules and methods of storing it, then the damage from insect pests is minimal.
- Polyethylene bags. Usually purchased humus or chicken droppings are laid out in the fall on one pile, and in the spring it, with living larvae, both beneficial and harmful, is added when planting plants to the soil in the garden bed. Try storing manure or compost in regular sugar plastic bags. In the fall, put the purchased organic fertilizer in bags, tie them tightly and leave them on the soil in the garden until spring, spreading them out in one layer. During frosts, the substrate in the bag will freeze and the larvae will die. In the spring, you can use organic matter from the bag without fear of the larvae of harmful insects settling in.
- Construction boxes. If the manure or compost prepared in autumn and frozen in bags is not enough for planting and you have to use fresh, unfrozen manure, then first place it in construction boxes and pour it well with a concentrated solution of potassium manganese. Treatments can be repeated up to four times. High-quality disinfection with a powerful antiseptic will definitely give a positive result and there will be no larvae.
May beetle larvae are a significant danger that can befall every gardener, so you should clearly understand all the features and secrets of fighting them.
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How to cope with adult beetles?
Constant destruction of larvae will practically not give the desired result if adult beetles exist freely on the site. The cockchafer flies at night and hibernates in the morning, nestling in the foliage of both trees and shrubs, thus camouflaging itself from prying eyes. Before the light or dawn, before the pest awakens, shake off the branches with a sharp movement and you will clearly find sleeping insects on the covering material. They need to be collected and neutralized.
Alternatively, you can build “light traps”. Lamps hung on trees and buckets filled with liquid installed below will become indispensable in the fight. The pests flock to the bright light, hit the light bulb and fall into the liquid, where they simply drown. For greater efficiency, experts advise adding a little kerosene, then the liquid will be more effective. It may be an effective method, but constant lighting in the middle of the night in the garden is not only an expensive device, but it can also attract not only pests to your plot...
