Banded cucumber beetle
Diabrotica balteata
The banded cucumber beetle is a small leaf beetle with a red head. Its yellow back has green bands across it. The colour of its wing cases can change with the plants it eats.
Lives in
America, from the southern United States to Colombia and Venezuela, and Cuba
Length
5 to 6 mm (0.2 to 0.24 in)
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless to people. Farmers do not like it because it damages their crops.
What does it eat?
The grown-ups eat leaves, flowers and fruit of cucumbers, beans, squash and many other plants. The larvae eat roots underground.
How big is it?
How long is it?
💅small enough to sit on your fingernail🍽️could run across a dinner table in 11 seconds
How big is Banded cucumber 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)
Banded cucumber beetle about 0.32 km/h (0.2 mph)
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
One female can lay up to 850 eggs, in little clusters hidden in cracks in the soil.
2
It grows from egg to grown-up very fast, so there can be six or seven families in a year.
3
It cannot stand freezing cold, so it does not live in cold places.
4
Ants like to eat its eggs.
you asked
Most asked questions about Banded cucumber beetle
?Is the banded cucumber beetle harmful?
Not to people, but it eats many crops and can spread plant diseases.
?How big is the banded cucumber beetle?
It is only about half a centimetre long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Diabrotica balteata
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Chrysomelidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Chrysomelidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
- Also known as
- Belted cucumber beetle
Where the facts come from
- Diabrotica balteata (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 Russ Ottens, University of Georgia, Bugwood.org. CC BY 3.0 us, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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