Summer chafer
The summer chafer is a light brown, fuzzy beetle that looks like a small cockchafer. On summer evenings lots of them buzz around the treetops. They love lights, fly in through open windows and bump noisily into lamps.
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Fun facts
You can see it from June to August, which is how it got its summer name.
Its larvae live underground for two to three years before they become beetles.
In the morning after a busy night, some are found floating in pools of water.
Ground beetles hunt the larvae in fields.
It is getting rarer, but where it lives you often see lots at once.
Most asked questions about Summer chafer
?Do summer chafers bite?
No. They are noisy and clumsy around lamps, but completely harmless.
?Why do summer chafers fly into the house?
They are attracted to light, so they come through open windows when the lamps are on.
?How big is a summer chafer?
It is about 2 centimetres long, smaller than a cockchafer.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Amphimallon solstitiale
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Scarabaeidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Scarabaeidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, North America
- Also known as
- European june beetle
Where the facts come from
- Amphimallon solstitiale (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 Bernard Ladenthin. CC BY 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.
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