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Sticker of Small yellow-girdled tenthredo
Bug card No. 3947 of 4,939

Small yellow-girdled tenthredo

Tenthredo temula

This sawfly is a shiny black insect with a yellow belt around its middle and a yellow tip on its tail. It looks a bit like a wasp, but it is a sawfly. You can meet it on flowers in hedges and meadows.

Lives in
Most of Europe and across Siberia, in hedgerows and meadows
Length
1 to 1.3 cm (0.39 to 0.51 in)
Top speed
about 20 km/h (12 mph)
Flying, estimate
What does it eat?
It eats nectar and pollen from flowers and also catches small insects. Its babies munch the leaves of privet bushes.
For real!Photo of Small yellow-girdled tenthredo
Picture by Hectonichus. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Small yellow-girdled tenthredo about 1.3 cm long (0.51 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
as long as 2 grains of rice in a rowcould fly across a whole football pitch in 19 secondsmoves 430 times its own body length every second

How big is Small yellow-girdled tenthredo compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its favourite flowers are flat white ones like cow parsley and hogweed. It also visits brambles and hawthorn.

2

Its babies grow up on privet, a bush that people often plant as a hedge.

3

You can tell males and females apart by their legs. Males have black legs, and females have black and yellow legs.

4

You can see it from May until late summer.

you asked

Most asked questions about Small yellow-girdled tenthredo

?What does this sawfly eat?

Nectar and pollen from flowers, and small insects. Its babies eat privet leaves.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Tenthredo temula
Named by
Scopoli, 1763
Group
Wasps and hornets
Family
Tenthredinidae
Classification
Insecta > Hymenoptera > Tenthredinidae
Lives on
Europe, Asia

Where the facts come from

  1. Tenthredo temula (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Hectonichus. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this 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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More from the same group: Wasps and hornets

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