Longhorn Flower Beetle – Bellamira
This beetle landed on our ice-cream-making supplies[1] while we were up near Eagle Harbor on July 20, 2024. This is a pretty big beetle, longer than the last joint of my thumb, and it was difficult getting it completely in frame with my macro lens.
So here is the head end,
and here is the tail end.
It had kind of a short head and a somewhat elongated neck,
and a fairly subdued pattern on the tapering abdomen.
Viewed from the side, the abdomen almost seemed to glow yellow
Which, closer in, is produced by a smooth, thin coat of gold-colored hairs.
This looks to be one of the Longhorned Flower Beetles, specifically Bellamira scalaris. And the abdomen tapering to a point means that this is a female. The larvae of these beetles live in decaying wood, while the adults come to flowers for nectar. That was probably why she came to our ice-cream supplies, the sugar and vanilla and chocolate and the like probably were close enough to what flowers smell like that she was lured in.
So, here’s one last shot, showing a closeup of her face. Because I know you all want to see that.
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[1] We were at the annual get-together with our friends up at the stamp sands. For some years now, our contribution has been instant ice-cream frozen with liquid nitrogen. I have a 10-liter DeWar flask (basically a giant thermos) for the nitrogen, I buy the nitrogen from the university, and we have a good ice cream recipe and a drill-mounted mixer. This makes about 2 gallons of ice cream in 4 batches, and the nitrogen freezes it while mixing in about 3-4 minutes. The fast freezing not only gets the ice cream made right away, it also makes for very small ice crystals and a smooth texture, even without the fancy emulsifiers and thickeners that most commerical ice cream uses.