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Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a Cockchafer
May was certainly a strange month. Last year, as we all went into Lockdown 1.0, the weather was glorious and everyone turned to the barbecue. This year the story was very different, with Spring 2021 being one of the coldest in a century. This had several knock-on effects, not least the fact consumers ditched ice lollies in favour of hot pots (according to one online food supplier). A more serious impact of the delayed summer is that nature has had a slow start this year.
May bug image courtesy of Kathleen Ball
One victim has been the May bug. A friend who lives on the outskirts of London has just sent me a picture of a rather impressive specimen crawling around her porch. As the name suggests, it’s more common to see this particular insect in May, although they can be seen anytime between April and July.
The May bug, Latin name Melolontha, goes by a number of different names, including:
- Doodlebug
- Spang beetle and Billy witch (Suffolk)
- Chovy, mitchamador, kittywitch or midsummer dor (Norfolk)
Whatever name it goes by, it is in fact a Common Cockchafer.
While the name may seem funny to us, in fact it derives from late seventeenth century usage of the words ‘cock’ – meaning size or vigour – and ‘chafer’ – denoting bugs like this. The word ‘chafer’ has an even older heritage, with a root in the Old English word ceafor or cefer. This has a Germanic origin, meaning it is related to the Dutch word kever, and means ‘gnawer’. The name ‘cockchafer’ therefore means ‘ large plant-gnawing beetle ’.
This name is certainly apt. The Common Cockchafer and its grubs have a voracious appetite and can severely damage harvests. Citizens of Avignon in France were so concerned about their harvest in 1320 that they put the Cockchafer on trial and banished them. When the insect didn’t comply, the locals simply collected and executed them.
Cockchafers as toys
This large bug has been a source of fascination to children throughout the ages. For example, in Ancient Greece it was common practice for boys to catch a Cockchafer and tie a linen thread to its feet. Once released, it would then fly in circles. Just imagine the young Alexander the Great enjoying a bit of light, Cockchafer-based relief as he takes a break from his lessons with Aristotle.
In Victorian England, children would create a similar effect by sticking pins through the wing of a Cockchafer. In fact, the renowned engineer Nikola Tesla recalled how, as a child, he caught four Cockchafers and created an ‘engine’ by harnessing them in a similar way.
Cockchafer as food
Cockchafers have always been abundant in Europe. In 1911, 20 million were collected from an 18 km-squared piece of woodland. This profusion makes it unsurprising that people have tried to turn them into food.
There are several extant recipes that use Cockchafers as a delicacy. In 19th century France, you might enjoy a steaming bowl of Cockchafer soup. In the 1920s, the German newspaper Fulda reports that children ate sugar-coated Cockchafers. There are also recipes for cooking the larvae, although they apparently require preparation using vinegar.
From abundance to near extinction
While Cockchafers have been a constant threat to agriculture in Europe, in more recent times their populations have been decimated to near extinction. The copious use of pesticides had a devastating impact on natural populations and, by the 1970s, some areas were essentially devoid of Cockchafers.
The fortunes of the Cockchafer changed however when we began to get a better understanding of the impact of these pesticides. Residues left on plants began to feed into our supply chains with negative impacts on human health, and insects became more resistant. This led to a reduction in the use of pesticides and slowly but surely Cockchafer numbers have increased.
Today, there are no pesticides licensed for Cockchafer management. Instead, agronomists use biological methods to kill the grubs, such as adding pathogenic fungi or nematodes to the soil.
How to identify a Cockchafer
The Common Cockchafer has two clear diagnostic features. Firstly, there are the unusual, fanned antennae – seven on a male and six on a female. The male uses these to detect pheromones, thereby allowing them to find a mate even in the dark.
Secondly, and probably the thing you’ll notice first, they are large. A Common Cockchafer measures between 25 and 30 mm and so you will certainly know if one is flying around you. When flying, they appear to be so large that you will wonder how they can fly at all.
Don’t be worried about Cockchafers
May bugs, doodlebugs or Billy witches may be alarming but they are harmless (unless you are a plant). They are not cockroaches and they do not sting or bite. So, when you see a flying May bug, marvel at the physics that keep it in the air and then count yourself lucky that you don’t live in Germany where they have the Large Cockchafer.
Image by Karsten Paulick from Pixabay
Snartlegogs, cockchafers and billy witches
Snartlegog, oak-wib, spang beetle, doodlebug, billy witch, kitty witch, cob worm, midsummer dor, rook worm, maybug … You might be hard pressed to find a beetle that has as many tales to tell and nicknames to go by than the cockchafer.
Emerging in May, these large brown beetles transform from larvae that have spent up to five years underground, eating plant roots and matter until they are large enough to pupate. Due to their huge, and seemingly relentless, appetites, they have in the past been persecuted almost to point of extinction and suffered the effects of heavy pesticide use. Having tales to tell such as the time in the 14 th century when France put the entire species on trial for destroying crops, they were exiled to a reserve with strict instructions to behave in a more orderly fashion and to not eat crops. Not being able to resist, cockchafers were then unfortunately detained and killed.
This treatment was not nearly as devastating to numbers however compared to their treatment in the early 20 th century when heavy pesticide use almost wiped out the species, with 20 million individuals collected and killed in just 18km2 in order to break up their life cycle.
Due to pesticide regulation, numbers of cockchafers UK are now recovering and they are now a little more appreciated with people looking out for their emergence each year and we were certainly delighted to see our first one last week!
Common cockchafer / Maybug (Melolontha melolontha), taking off from human finger, Wiltshire garden, UK, May. - Nick Upton/2020VISION
Spending just six weeks in the adult form and rarely having damaging effects in the UK, they spend the summer looking for a mate and can be found flying around tree lines, with the males using their feathered antennae to help detect the females’ pheromones.
You can tell a male apart from a female, as males have seven leaves to their antennae with females sporting six and they also have a longer appendage at the back, her ovipositor which she uses to lay her an impressive 80 eggs a summer with.
Have you seen a snartlegog yet this year? We’d love to hear from you and also if you know of any different names.
cockchafer
June beetle or May beetle, a blackish or mahogany-colored beetle of the scarab beetle family, widely distributed in North America and especially abundant in the NE United States and the adjacent parts of Canada. It is also known as June bug, although true bugs belong to a different insect order. The adults, which may swarm in great numbers in early summer and are attracted to lights, feed by night on the foliage of deciduous trees and hide during the day. The eggs are laid in the soil, where the larvae, called white grubs, remain for two or three years, eating the roots and other underground parts of grasses, grains, and trees. The grubs cause great destruction to lawns and fir trees. Many birds and small mammals, such as skunks and pigs, root out the grubs and eat them. The insects pupate underground in the fall and emerge as adults the following spring. June beetles are sometimes called cockchafers, a name used primarily for some of their close relatives in the Old World. They are closely allied to the leaf chafers, including the rose chafer. June beetles are classified in the phylum Arthropoda, class Insecta, order Coleoptera, family Scarabaeidae.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia™ Copyright © 2022, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.
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Cockchafer
(may beetle, or June beetle), the common name for two species of beetles of the genus Melolontha, family Scarabaeidae; a plant pest. Its length is 22-29 mm. The body is black; the elytra are reddish brown and covered with white hairs. The larvae of both species of cockchafers are yellowish white (length up to 60 mm) and practically indistinguishable. M. hippocastani is distributed in Europe and Asia; it is found everywhere in the European USSR (except the Far North) and in Siberia as far as Transbaikalia. M. melolontha is found only in Europe; it is in the west and south of the European USSR.
Cockchafers cause considerable damage to young fruit trees, berry bushes, and timber, as well as in truck gardening and field crops. The adult beetles feed on the leaves of trees, predominantly birch, maple, and oak; in years of mass flight they often completely eat off the leaves, causing severe damage to plantings. The flight of the beetles begins in May and in the south, in late April. Ten to 20 days after the beginning of the flight, mating takes place, followed by oviposition. The female deposits at different times a total of 50-70 eggs in the soil and then dies. Cockchafers cause the greatest damage in the larval stage, feeding at first on the roots of herbaceous plants and humus and later on the roots of trees. The development of the larvae in the soil lasts four to five years. Young pines suffer the greatest damage from the larvae of cockchafers. Seedlings and slips damaged by cockchafer larvae quickly die or are retarded in development.
Control measures include the cultivation of forests to ensure growth of healthy and resistant plantings (preparation of the soil with annual or biennial fallowing, proper selection of tree and shrub varieties, and the use of high-quality materials in sowing and transplanting), treatment of plantings with insecticides during the flight of the cockchafers, and application of insecticides to the soil or treatment of the roots with insecticides before transplanting to kill the larvae.
REFERENCE
Lesnaia entomologiia. Moscow, 1965.The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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