Go kneesy on big bugs

ON a nice spring day, all sorts of insects pop out of hiding.

I find few more charming than the huge, fat, ungainly oil beetles.

Every year about this time I see the hulking ladies wiggle helplessly across roads and footpaths, hoping for a nice dusty dirt pile to drop her eggs in.

Of course footpaths and roads are terrible places to have eggs, and I always find myself picking up one at a time, careful not to annoy them (we’ll go into why later) and depositing them somewhere more suitable – only to see likely the same ladies trying the same thing again. Sisyphus has nothing on me.

So, oil beetles huh? Repulsive name, but we’ll get to that. There were once eight species of oil beetle in the UK, but three have gone extinct because of changes in farming and only two are widespread. You may see them on heaths, dunes or woodlands with nicely stomped-down earth paths.

The two species you might catch a glimpse of are the black oil beetle and violet oil beetles. The other three – the short-necked, rugged and Mediterranean – are much rarer and generally smaller.

Our two seeable species can grow to a whopping 3cm long, and have a giant, soft abdomen, making them look like an obese ant.

It’s hard to get them confused with anything else really, but there are a few other big black beetles here. If you are unsure, look for the wings. Most black beetles have wings that cover most of their bodies and are separated, while oil beetles wings start overlapping, moving apart as the massive bum erupts out. Think of it as a tiny wrapped skirt.

But why they are called oil beetles? Well, if you upset them, they drip orange, foul-smelling oil from their knees to scare you off.

Now, the unique thing about these creatures is if a lady can find a place to lay her thousands of eggs without getting stepped on, those eventually hatch into tiny little ant-size babies.

These spread out, looking for flowers to climb and at the top they wait for passing bees stopping for nectar. If a bee ever shows up, they grab on like a little limpet and hitchhike their way back to the bees’ nest. Here, they gorge themselves eating bee eggs, before sleeping and waking as an adult, ready to do it all over again. But few make it to a bee nest, so if you’re on a dusty path watch out for these bulging bugs.