Flame-shouldered blister beetle
The flame-shouldered blister beetle is a black beetle with orange patches at the front of its wing covers, like little flames on its shoulders. It lives near the nests of digger bees. Its babies sneak into the bee nests by hitching a ride on the bees.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
A mother beetle lays two thousand eggs or more near a digger bee nest in September.
The tiny babies rest all winter. In May they climb onto a male bee and hold on to its hairs.
When the male bee meets a female bee, the beetle babies climb over to her and ride along to her nest.
In the nest, a beetle baby jumps onto a bee egg that floats on honey like a raft. It eats the egg first, then the honey.
In Britain it is very rare and only found in southern England.
Most asked questions about Flame-shouldered blister beetle
?What does the flame-shouldered blister beetle eat?
Its babies eat a digger bee's egg and then the honey the bee stored for its own baby.
?Where does the flame-shouldered blister beetle live?
In western Europe, near digger bee nests in old sunny walls and steep earth banks.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Sitaris muralis
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Meloidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Meloidae
- Lives on
- Europe
Where the facts come from
- Sitaris muralis (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 Tobias 67. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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