Ornate checkered beetle
Trichodes ornatus
The ornate checkered beetle is a small, colourful beetle that lives only in North America. Grown-up beetles sit on flowers. Its larvae have a sneaky trick: they grow up inside the nests of bees.
Lives in
Only in North America
Length
0.5 to 1.5 cm (0.2 to 0.59 in)
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting people, so you can watch it up close.
What does it eat?
The larvae eat bee larvae or pollen inside bee nests. The grown-ups feed on flowers like yarrow and milkweed.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚as long as 2.5 grains of rice in a row🍽️could run across a dinner table in 7.2 seconds
How big is Ornate checkered beetle compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
A garden snail about 0.05 km/h (0.03 mph)
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
Ornate checkered beetle about 0.5 km/h (0.31 mph)
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
Its larvae mostly live in the nests of leafcutter and mason bees.
2
Grown-up beetles seem to like yellow flowers best.
3
Females are bigger than males: up to 15 millimetres, while males reach about 11.
you asked
Most asked questions about Ornate checkered beetle
?What does the ornate checkered beetle eat?
As a larva it eats bee larvae or pollen in bee nests. As an adult it visits flowers.
?How big is the ornate checkered beetle?
About 5 to 15 millimetres long. Females are bigger than males.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Trichodes ornatus
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Cleridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Cleridae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Trichodes ornatus (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 USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Laboratory from Beltsville, USA. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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