Common pine sawfly
The common pine sawfly is a small cousin of wasps and bees that lives in pine forests. The boy is dark brown with feathery, comb-like feelers. The girl is yellow and black, and her egg-laying tube is shaped like a tiny saw.
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Fun facts
The mum uses her saw to cut little grooves in pine needles and lays her eggs inside them.
One mum can lay about 100 to 150 eggs.
The young caterpillars live together in groups of 60 to 100.
The caterpillar can grow to 25 millimetres, much longer than the grown-up sawfly.
Its pupa can wait in its cocoon for more than a year before the sawfly comes out.
Most asked questions about Common pine sawfly
?What do pine sawfly caterpillars eat?
They eat pine needles, mostly from Scots pine, and they eat in big groups.
?Why is it called a sawfly?
Because the female has a saw-shaped tube for cutting slots in needles to lay her eggs.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Diprion pini
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Diprionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Diprionidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Common pine sawfly (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by John Curtis (died 1862). Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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