Ask An Entomologist: Bug ID’s
November 15th, 2008 by Kelley
Well I got scolded by my little sister saying I haven’t been updating regularly on the site. I’ll admit, I’ve been busy with work and trying to buy a house in the current market. Haven’t been keeping my camera on me lately.
But, some of you have kept your cameras with you and have steadily been sending ‘Ask an Ento’ questions. A lot of the questions have been about bug identifications.
Lisa wrote:
Hi I was just wondering if I could send a picture of this bug I found on my windshield the other day. It looked like some sort of bee/wasp except it was very long(2 or 3 inches). It was black and yellow with wings, and its stinger had to be an inch or so long. I was in the VA Beach area, and I’ve seen nothing like that before. I’ve looked on many websites, and I cannot find an insect like it.
I really like that photo and its of a megarhyssa parasitoid ichneumon wasp. They use those very long ovipositors to drill into trees to lay their eggs on developing woodwasp larvae. Kind of funny pic because you usually see those bugs in the woods…and from the pic it looks like this little lady got a little lost.
Another reader, Annie, asked about the following:
I found your blog by googling “ask an entomologist” haha. I’m one of those “what is this bug in my house?” people. I found some sort of unusual beetle (I think) and was wondering what it was as I’ve never seen it around here before (here being NJ). I took a picture of it after putting it on our porch. I am just curious what it is and hoping they don’t take over my house. I’ve only seen a few over the past couple
months but they don’t seem dangerous, just slowly strolling along.
That is not a beetle, but a stink bug. They have glands in their thorax that produce the ’stink’ part of their name. The liquid they produce is part of their defense mechanism against predators. They use a long piercing-sucking mouth`part to feed on plant juices.
Wesley wrote:
We recently had an infestation of fruit flies in our apartment in New York City. I understand it has something to do with the time of the year. But when I squashed some of them (I eventually killed them all, dear me), I noticed they had red blood. Question: do they have red blood or were they somehow feeding on us?
The red stuff wasn’t blood from the insect or the humans…it was likely the red pigment in the eyes of the flies, and as you know, fruit flies often have red colored eyes. Didn’t know bugs had pigment in their eyes, did you??
I think the first pic looks like the wasp is attacking the building.
Here’s a fruit fly removal tip: Put some apple cider vinegar and a little dish soap in a bowl. Stir it up a little. The flies will drown themselves in the vinegar.
More specifically, the stink bug looks like the brown marmorated stink bug (Halyomorpha halys), an introduced species from Asia. They can be identified primarily by the two white or light-colored bands on the antennae. They were first spotted in the U.S. in the mid ’90s, in Pennsylvania, and quickly spread throughout the northeast. Actually, in your reader Annie’s home state of NJ, Dr. George Hamilton at Rutgers has contributed substantially to the literature on the ecology and management of this species in its introduced range.
The BMSB has also been relocated (accidentally, of course) to California and Oregon, and have also since spread to the southeastern U.S., and were recently recorded for the first time (by me, actually) from my current home state of Tennessee.
They’re pretty bad news, because they’re highly polyphagous in nature. They can be particularly bad pests on fruit trees and soybeans.
I just found your site today, and I love the look, name, and the content!
A fellow bug nerd,
J.R. Jones