Meloe violaceus

Violet oil beetle females ( Meloe violaceus )

The Violet oil beetle or Violet or Blue Maiwurm ( Meloe violaceus ) is a beetle of the family of blister beetles ( Meloidae ).

Features

The beetles are 10 to 32 millimeters long, the females are something bigger than the males. Your body is stocky and blue to violet-blue, rarely black colored blue. Head and pronotum are very finely dotted with dull point intervals. These parts of the body shine slightly, compared to the rest of the body. The elytra are much shorter than the abdomen and gape at the end apart sharply, while they - quite unusual for beetle elytra - overlap basal. The middle antennal segments of the male are built bigger and stronger and strongly deformed compared to the female.

Similar Species

• Blue Black oil beetle ( MELOE proscarabaeus )

Occurrence

The animals come in all of Europe, even in the far north, east to Siberia before. They live on a sunny and dry terrain with flowering plants, especially in the mountain foothills and mountains.

Way of life

The adults feed on pollen. The larvae live exclusively as parasites, especially in the nests of solitary bees ( for example, sand or fur bees bees) or in Set of locusts. The females lay here about 2,000 to 10,000 eggs, because the loss rates are very high.

Development

The development of about three millimeters long larvae proceeds via a Hyper metamorphosis, the various larval stages are therefore designed differently. Here, the first stage is designed as a three Klauer ( Triungulinus ) and serves as the dissemination stage by it clings to a potential host animal. For this, the larvae wait for flowers and cling to approaching insects. After they have eaten the egg first and then the nectar and pollen mixture of the pantry of the bee, they leave the nest. They molt one more time and then are rather made ​​like and hardly movable, with back legs formed. These larvae pupate, from the chrysalis eventually hatches the finished insect.

When the larva has inadvertently selected a honey bee, she dies in the hive.