Oil and Slaughter

Took the picture of the bugger above as it and several of its friends were trying to dispatch my potato plants. Hard to tell from the picture but they were up to an inch and a half long. Never seen the like of this before and it is a rather interesting and beautiful insect with its deep metallic blue carapace so I allowed its feast to continue until I could determine what it was.

Turns out it’s a member of the genus meloe, also known as the American Oil beetle or blister beetle, thusly named because if disturbed it plays dead and secretes an oily liquid from the joints of its exoskeleton which blisters human skin. And then there was this –

First-instar larvae climb to the top of a grass or weed stalk as a group, clump together in the shape of a female solitary ground bee, exude a scent that is the same as, or closely resembles, the pheromones of the female bee, and wait for a male ground bee to come along. When he does, he tries to mate with the clump of larvae, whereupon they individually clamp onto his hairs. He then flies away, finds and mates with one or several real female bees, and the larvae transfer to the female(s).
Each impregnated female bee then flies off and builds one to several nests in burrows she digs in the soil, and the larvae transfer again to the new nests. The female bee stocks these nests with honey and pollen for her own young, but the hungry blister beetle young are there to gobble up the provisions. They eventually pupate and finally emerge as adult flightless beetles. Brothers and sisters find each other and mate, produce eggs and the hatchlings start the process all over.

I’d had quite a few honey bees and bumble bees enjoying my sunflowers this year. I’d kind of like them to come back for the next. And this was just lovely-

Then there are the bipedal primates who use cantharidin from blister beetles to manufacture the notorious date rape drug, Spanish Fly…

After weighing the pollinators against those who would eat them and my potatoes and having visions of the next decade’s teenage boys pocketing a couple beetles before taking the squidlette to the drive in, the beetles’ fates were sealed. They attempted to retaliate as I took a stick and knocked them from their perches, trying to give me gangrene by spitting their oily yellow pus at me, but resistance turned out to be futile and they were eventually squashed under a heavy block of granite. No baby bees for the blister beetles this year but I imagine their carcasses made the ant colony in my back yard very happy and the circle of life continues.