Polyester Bee In Idaho?
Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 7:49 PM
We nearly stepped on this fellow in our kitchen in North Idaho. She is grey with a smooth abdomen and a fuzzy thorax and yellow front legs and face. At first we thought she was covered in plaster dust or something. Is she a polyester bee?
AnnE & James
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
Queen Yellowjacket covered with dust
Dear AnnE & James,
We wanted to verify our suspicions with Eric Eaton, and this is what he wrote back to us: “Daniel: An extremely dusty queen yellowjacket, probably the western yellowjacket, Vespula pensylvanica. Eric” With that, we can say you are lucky you didn’t step on her.
Hong Kong bug
Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 5:24 PM
Hello,
I just took this photo yesterday (April 18) on a roadside tree in Hong Kong. These bugs have been appearing for years, but only on this one specific tree. At times I have seen more than five all within plain sight.
They are about 2 inches long from nose to tail. The can fly, but not well, and they move sideways just as easily as backwards and forwards.
I don’t even know where to start looking them up – they look half moth and half beetle.
Thanks
Guy
Mid Levels, Hong Kong
Longan Chicken, a Lanternfly
Dear Guy,
This is a Lanternfly, an unusual group of insects in the family Fulgoridae. When we posted another image of this species from Hong Kong in January 2007, we got this species identification: “Hi Bugman,
I believe that the lanternfly that Alex found in Hong Kong is Pyrops candelaria. The two most “common” Mandarin common names of this lanternfly , if translated literaly to English, is “white wax cicarda” (because of the white, wax-like powders on its eggs), and “longan chicken” (because it feeds on saps of the longan trees (Dimocarpus longan) as well as other fruit trees such as mango, lichi and olive). Pyrops candelaria is easily seen in Hong Kong and SE Asia. Images can be found here ( http://www.pbase.com/bluetitan/pyropscandelaria ) and here ( http://aestheticarthropoda.blogspot.com/2006/12/pyrops-candelaria.html ). (Unfortunately most of the introduction to this lanternfly is in Mandarin, and the second link is the best English description I can find.) hopefully you find it helpful, Wei-Ting “ As a side note, we use the compound word Lanternfly, while some websites prefer to split the units and call this insect a Lantern Fly. That would imply that it is a true fly, which it is not. We stand firm on the spelling Lanternfly being correct.
Unknown caterpillar
Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 6:40 AM
My son found this caterpillar on the grass. He was quite a compliant fellow and I placed him on a plectranthus leaf in order to get a better shot. He was quite a chunky caterpillar and when he did move about, his body extended to about 8cm. I’d love to know a bit more about him.
Tami Roos
South of Johannesburg in South Africa
Unknown Caterpillar
Dear Tami,
We did not have any luck identifying your caterpillar on the South African page of the World’s Largest Saturniidae Site. We searched there because we believe your caterpillar is in the family Saturniidae, the Giant Silk Moths. We will try to contact Bill Oehlke to see if he can identify your caterpillar.
Daniel,
I do not think it is a Saturniidae caterpillar. I have nothing that is a good match.
Thanks for thinking of me.
Bill Oehlke
Long neck, not a mantis?
Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 6:41 PM
Stanford university, tall grass, mixed oak woodland, middle of a hot spring day. On my leg, probably from the grass.
Dave H
Palo Alto, Ca, USA
Snakefly
Hi Dave,
This is the third Snakefly image we have posted from California in a short period of time. Perhaps it is a more plentiful year for this harmless predator, or perhaps people are just more closely observing the other creatures we share this troubled world with.
Giant longicorn? from Uganda
Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 4:11 AM
This giant longicorn (?) flew to my dads shirt in our hotel at nile river in Uganda. It was midday during rain session (November) in Murchison Falls National Park (North West Uganda).
Please help me identify this bug, since I cannot seem to find any reliable information about bugs in the internet other than your (truly amazing) site!
David Jule
Murchison Falls National Park, North West Uganda
Unknown Longicorn from Uganda
Hi David,
That is one impressive Longicorn. Sadly, we are unsure of its exact identity. Hopefully, one of our readers will be able to supply you with a species name. We are also not certain what a Bockkäfer is, the name you have given the photo file, but we like the name.
Hi Daniel!
Bockkäfer is in fact german for “longicorn” but I can imagine that it really looks weird with this amount of “ckk” 
I’m going to get the “Insects of South Africa” book from the library and hopefully that will give me some ID.
I keep you on track!
Best regards!
David
Update: Giant longicorn? from Uganda
Sun, May 3, 2009 at 11:15 PM
Hey Daniel!
Thanks to Karl Adelbaur from the Landesmuseum Joanneum in Austria, the Longicorn from Uganda is a male Macrotoma palmata, (underfamily Prioninae). It’s common name is Large Brown Longhorn and it’s distributed nearly all over africa. I think it feed’s on wood, fruits and woodlike plants, especially Acacia.
Dear greetings,
David J. Mack
Is this a Blister Beetle?
Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 1:35 PM
I have lived in Arizona for awhile and have never seen a bug like this until recently I noticed a bunch in our yard and floating in the pool. I am wondering if this is a Blister Beetle.
Melissa
Queen Creek, AZ
Iron Cross Blister Beetles
Hi Melissa,
You are correct. This is an Iron Cross Blister Beetle in the genus Tegrodera. Of the three species posted to BugGuide, Tegrodera aloga is the one that has been reported from Arizona. The members of this genus are also known as Soldier Blister Beetles. Through the years, we have gotten so many reports of critters that have fallen into swimming pools that we want to have a small section of our book cover those incidents. Your photo is quite beautiful.
Saturday 18 April 2009, 10 PM
We went to the grocery store to buy a steak to eat with the four edible morels that sprouted under our carob tree between the Digitalis. We we went out to pick the morels, we noticed the silhouette of a large beetle on the screen door. We have never seen such a large beautiful black Click Beetle before in Los Angeles. We captured the beetle and measured it at a whopping 1 1/8 inches, and we tried unsuccessfully to photograph it.
Click Beetle
It is dark and we have to manually focus, and the beetle was moving fast. Furthermore, the batteries are low and we didn’t buy more at the market. After taking four blurry images, we put the Click Beetle in the refrigerator to cool down and hopefully slow its metabolism. We tried to identify this beauty on BugGuide, and we believe it may be in the genus Lanelater. It looks startlingly like Lanelater sallei, but that species is from the Gulf States. A pdf on the genus Lanelater that we located online mentions another species from Arizona, Lanelater schottii, and BugGuide has an image of that species as well. Can our beetle be Lanelater schottii? We plan to buy new batteries tomorrow and taking some better images by daylight. While photographing this Click Beetle on the kitchen table, we turned it on its back several times. It can right itself in one or two tries. It only flips about 2 inches in the air.
Click Beetle
We chilled the Click Beetle and got a clearer image, but we hope to get new batteries and shoot it again tomorrow morning.
Click Beetle
Update: Sunday 19 April 2009, 2:04 PM
We kept the Unknown Click Beetle in the refrigerator overnight, and it paid off. We managed to get numerous images before the beetle became too active.
Unknown Click Beetle
We have decent shots of both the dorsal and ventral view.
Unknown Click Beetle
The spines at the tips of the thorax are quite prominent. The heat has set in in LA and we are expecting highs of 95º today and tomorrow. There were countless beetles and moths at the porch light.
Unknown Click Beetle
This Click Beetle is large and very black. Now that we are certain we have good photo documentation, we are releasing our pretty Click Beetle and waiting for Eric Eaton or another reader to assist us in the proper identification.
Unknown Click Beetle
Saturday 18 April 2009, 5:30 PM
We turned over a rock in the garden today and were surprised by this large Soil Centipede.
Soil Centipede
According to BugGuide, it is in the genus Strigamia, but there is virtually no information. The Soil Centipede page for the Order Geophilomorpha has a bit more information, including: “Size Most are less than 5 cm, some reach 17 cm. (1)
Identification Slender eyeless centipedes that have 31 to 177 pairs of legs and antennae with 14 segments. The number of pairs of legs is always odd. (1)
Habitat They can penetrate as deep as 70 cm into soil and feed on insect larvae and worms.”
Soil Centipede
Our own observation included that this overthree inch long specimen could move equally proficiently in reverse, with the entire centipede walking backwards. It was very difficult for us to take these images. The camera no longer autofoces, and the batteries were dying. We had to shut the camera off after almost every image, and then refocus each time. The Soil Centipede was moving quickly and was difficult to focus on. A straight line measured on today’s LA Times from the s in Washington to the u in discuss is 2 7/8 inches, and that doesn’t include the bend in the Soil Centipede’s body.
Soil Centipede
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