Enter The Shining Flower Beetle:
Ok, I’ll admit the headline title was a little dramatized 🙂 However they are shiny and they are also Beetles – the beetle in fact of the genus Olibrus from the family of Phalacridae. There now, don’t you feel all the better for knowing that! Hmm
Anyway these little beggars were all over my Swede flower-heads like a rash of creeping shotgun pellets, and for a brief moment I thought they were a real garden pest and were making a meal out of all my hard work and setting about to destroy my swede crop.
Thinking initially they were the tiny Leaf Beetle about to turn my swede leafs into organic colanders full of tiny holes, I approached the bugs to give them what-for with the garlic water spray.
Close-up however I noticed they did not immediately leap away. Now the thing that distinguishes the flea beetle
is the fact that they will immediately jump away as soon as you approach them – it is how they get their name after all, and it is also how they escape from predators.
These little shiny critters however just kept creeping around the flower heads, intent on getting the nectar from the flowers. On closer inspection they were not the jumping flea beetles of the family Chrysomelidae, but instead were the relatively harmless beetle known as the Shining Flower Beetle.
Whew drama over for now! These beetles although some consider as a pest, normally do no real harm at all and usually disappear as fast as they come.
These Olibrus SFB’s emerge from the soil in late spring – early summer, where they have spent the winter as a pre-pupa. The adults and larva feed on flowers sucking the nectar and sap from the flower heads, until in the larva drop into the soil to emerge the following spring to continue the cycle.
Remedy?
Personally I won’t lose any sleep over the shiny bugs, as they really are not doing any damage at the current levels.
However if they bother you then apart from the many chemical bug-killers on the market (which I do not recommend using) the good old Garlic and water spray does NOT have any effect on them, nor does the chili water spray.
However the old vinegar and water spray certainly had an impact 🙂 2-4 table spoons of vinegar to a one pint hand sprayer is fine. Try on a part of the plant first though as some definitely do not like the acid effect that vinegar has on the leaves if it is too strong.
Best experiment with the concentrations of water to vinegar ratio until you get it right. This remedy is excellent for a number of leaf-eating critters and vegetable pests.
Well, that’s it for the Shiny Flower Beetle – I wonder what will wander next into my veggie patch…