Pollen beetle
The pollen beetle is a tiny black beetle with a shiny green glow. It loves yellow rapeseed flowers and crawls around in them eating pollen. It is so small that several could sit on your fingernail.
How big is it?
How long is it?
How big is Pollen beetle compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The mother lays her eggs inside flower buds, and the larvae grow up inside the flowers.
Its larvae are white, with little brown plates on their bodies.
Farmers know it well, because it can damage the buds of rapeseed so the flowers drop.
Nobody knows for sure whether it also helps the rapeseed by carrying pollen from flower to flower.
Most asked questions about Pollen beetle
?What does the pollen beetle eat?
Pollen and nectar from flowers, especially rapeseed.
?Is the pollen beetle harmful?
Not to people. It can damage rapeseed crops.
?How big is a pollen beetle?
Only about 2 to 3 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Brassicogethes aeneus
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Nitidulidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Nitidulidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, North America
- Also known as
- Common pollen beetle, Rape pollen beetle, Rape blossom beetle
Where the facts come from
- Brassicogethes aeneus (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 Reinhold Möller Ermell. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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.
Stag beetle
Hercules beetle
Common glow-worm
Goliath beetle
Cockchafer
Mealworm beetle
Striped earwig
Passionvine hopper
Winter ant
Sloe bug
Army cutworm
Grey dagger