Adult Click Beetles are long skinny beetles with grooves running down their wing covers. Most adult Click Beetles are 12-30 mm long, a few species get up to 45 mm. The front of their heads and the back end of their wing covers are rounded. The hard-coated click beetle grubs, which may spend up to four years in that stage, are called “wireworms”.

Tiger Beetles are wolves of the insect world and are described as having “wicked jaws and bulging eyes.” They spot and chase down their prey—ants, caterpillars, aphids, and other small invertebrates—overtaking them, grabbing them with their pinchers, and banging their little bodies against the ground to kill them. Then they suck out the tender-bits and eat some of the crunchy-bits. Beetles have “complete” metamorphosis—like humans, their path to maturity passes through egg, larval and pupal stages before reaching adulthood.

June Bugs are beetles that often appear at the end of May (and so are sometimes called May Beetles) and can be found through part of July. June bugs spend the day sheltered under the ground. They emerge after sunset, over a period of several hours; eating leaves at night. At at dawn, the whole population will disappear within ten minutes.

Now that spring is bursting out all over the place, the Bug Lady would like to dispense with the final, indoor “winterbugs”—the ladybug and the leaf-footed bug—both of which are among the organisms in the Bug Lady’s house that are liable to produce a bad odor when disturbed.

Milkweeds and goldenrods are famous for being hosts to a tremendous variety of insects and other arthropods that come to eat or be eaten. Both adult and immature insects that eat milkweed at some part of their life cycle are poisonous to their predators because of the toxic cardiac glycosides contained in milkweed sap.