Black oil beetle
The black oil beetle is a big, slow, dark beetle with a fat tummy and very short wing cases. It cannot fly. Its babies are sneaky hitchhikers that ride on bees to get a free home and free food.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It has no back wings at all, so it cannot fly.
The mother lays her eggs in the soil. The tiny larvae then climb up into a flower and wait for a bee.
When a solitary bee visits the flower, a larva grabs on with its claws and rides back to the bee's nest.
Some larvae do not even need a flower. They can make a flowery smell themselves to trick bees into coming close.
The writer Gerald Durrell described this beetle in his famous book My Family and Other Animals.
Most asked questions about Black oil beetle
?Can oil beetles fly?
No. The black oil beetle has no back wings and only short wing cases.
?How do oil beetle larvae get into a bee's nest?
They wait in a flower, grab onto a visiting bee and ride back to its nest.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Meloe proscarabaeus
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Meloidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Meloidae
- Lives on
- Europe
Where the facts come from
- Meloe proscarabaeus (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 ivtorov. CC0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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