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Sticker of Beech scale
Bug card No. 0327 of 4,939

Beech scale

Cryptococcus fagisuga
Eats: PlantsTrue bugs and cicadasForests and woods6 legs

The beech scale is a tiny insect that lives on beech trees and wraps itself in fluffy white wax. It is only about one millimetre long. It pokes a long thin mouth into the bark and sucks the tree's sap.

Lives in
Europe and western Asia, and brought by accident to North America
Length
1 mm (0.04 in)
Top speed
about 0.06 km/h (0.04 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless to people, but it can make beech trees sick.
What does it eat?
It sucks sap from the bark of beech trees, and nothing else.
For real!Photo of Beech scale
Picture by User:Gerhard Elsner. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Beech scale about 1 mm long (0.04 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)
6 of them in a row are as long as one grain of ricecould run across a dinner table in 60 seconds

How big is Beech scale compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

There are no boys at all. The mothers lay eggs without needing a male.

2

The babies, called crawlers, can walk. Once a crawler finds a good spot, it loses its legs and stays there for the rest of its life.

3

A crawler can be carried to a new tree by the wind or even on a bird's foot.

4

The little holes it makes let in a fungus that causes beech bark disease, which can kill big trees.

5

It only lives on beech trees that are at least 30 years old.

you asked

Most asked questions about Beech scale

?Is the beech scale harmful?

Not to people. But the holes it makes in beech bark let in a fungus that can kill the trees.

?What does the beech scale look like?

A tiny insect about one millimetre long, covered in white wool like cotton.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Cryptococcus fagisuga
Group
True bugs and cicadas
Classification
Insecta > Hemiptera
Lives on
Europe, Asia, North America
Also known as
Woolly beech scale

Where the facts come from

  1. Cryptococcus fagisuga (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 User:Gerhard Elsner. 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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