We have four batches left if I include singletons, and thank Ceiling Cat I’m leaving for a month so I don’t have to beg for photos. But that will give you a month to get some good pictures together for my return at the beginning of September. If you do have a contribution, please save it until my return so it doesn’t get lose in the deluge of email.
Today’s photos come from Mary Rasmussen, who took them in Michigan. Her captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Hairy Flower Scarab Beetles Feeding and Sleeping in My Garden
The Hairy Flower Scarab beetle (Trichiotinus assimilis) uses bee mimicry to ward off predators. They are fairly common here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and some years we have a large number of them feeding on wildflowers and flowers in my small garden:
These harmless, furry-looking beetles feed on pollen and nectar:
Hairy Flower Scarab beetles mating. The male has larger, orange antennae:
Just after dawn I noticed a few beetles “sleeping” in flowers in my garden. They stayed motionless in the flowers until the sun warmed them up. Not only were they cute, but really easy to photograph!:
I made it a point to go out in the morning at first light to catch these bugs snoozing:
A beekeeper friend says that insects just stop wherever they are when the temperature gets too cold, but this looks pretty intentional to me. This flower is on an old rose bush from a kind neighbor. It is wonderfully fragrant and I’d sleep in it too if I could:
Such a good set! Tricky (for me) to control the exposure on white flowers, as they usually get over-exposed. One can now see that these beetles are bee mimics, particularly one of the metallic green bees that are also common.
Lovely pics. I never thought much about insects’ sleeping. It’s delightful to learn that some of them sleep nestled in flower petals.
🐝🪲
Sleeping beetles are interesting and funny. They look just like little mammals do when nestled in their bedding. Human sleep and mouse sleep are surely homologous functions. Are human sleep and insect sleep homologous?
Honeybees apparently also sleep (or so they appear to be doing) in flowers. However, this constitutes bunking off in the course of a busy day.
What excellent photos! That nose-down sleeping posture is comical, and a bit surprising — you’d think they would be easily caught by predators in that pose.
Lovely. Happy, drunk bees! 🙂