Fiddler beetles

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Riverber, 29.05.2007 18:53

Dear entomologists,
I remember liking bronzes from my childhood... We caught them with friends and launched them...
Now I want to catch a couple of Cetonia aurata, keep them alive, and try to breed them... This leads to several questions:
1) In what period of 5 years?
2) What can they eat at home?
3) How to achieve the location of the female? (:
4) Where the eggs are laid and what the larvae feed
on, please help (:

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17.06.2008 18:15, Guest

Maybe in the same place where a couple of entomologists picked up a bunch of them a couple of years ago, but the population has shifted. Or disappeared in this area. Go figure it out... It also happened that the conditions of the area for development are ideal, the year turned out to be good, and a particular species comes across only rarely, and in general not where it was in the mass before. It's even a shame. You go to a familiar area for half a day, then come back with nothing...

Specifically about the view. I only know that the generation of aeruginosa is two(three)so they live in old hollow plantings. Moreover, they do not feed on the stamens of flowers, but as large Lucanidae, secretions from various tree injuries, such as frost cracks, but not at the base of the trunk, but mainly in the crowns, which may explain the ubiquitous rarity of finds of this beautiful insect. It is better to search in broad-leaved mixed oak forests (nemorali)- like an oak with a linden tree under 80 years old, maple, hazel in the undergrowth. Personally, I have not yet climbed a tree on a ladder. Maybe there is a common aeruginosa, but so far it has been listed in the Red Book of the Republic of Tatarstan with a degree of rarity worse than a deer beetle. It remains to conclude: a poorly studied species with limited habitat. And a tasty morsel to any collection

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18.06.2008 10:30, Necrocephalus

Last year, with Necrocephalus in the Belgorod region, we caught one piece of P. (C.) aeruginosa in the vicinity of a small hollow oak tree in a broad-leaved forest (oak+maple). P. marmorata (=lugubris) developed in the same hollow.

Yes, it was quite interesting

to open an oak hollow with an axe, where they found a whole brood of P. marmorata and a couple of Dendrophilus punctatus in the dust. We were about to leave when a large beetle swooped down on us from somewhere deep in the forest, buzzing loudly. The bronze bird circled around the ruined hollow tree for a long time, but we didn't wait for it to sit down - what if it flew away?

They knocked me to the ground with their hands. It turned out to be P. aeruginosa. Apparently, she flew to the strong smell of rot that went through the forest from a broken hollow tree...

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25.06.2008 15:17, Mikhail F. Bagaturov

I strongly suspect that this is P. speciosa jousselini.
In the culture of the masses and is popular in Europe, and the photo is most likely not from nature.

Well, about auroginosis, a few words to what the dear Mr. Nimrod has already said. Setepen probability of catching this species (namely capture, not occurrence) depends on 99% of the year, because in my experience, the population of this species is quite stable and you can observe beetles regularly (if you do not walk with your head down all the time), just the beast this crown. And in some years, and probably at low atmospheric pressure (this is my guess), it "descends to the ground" in the presence of suitable feeding objects, when it is mostly caught.
For example, they regularly fall into traps hung in the crowns of willows...
By the way, this species is also widespread in culture in Europe en masse. However, in Moscow it is bred not for the first year...

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26.06.2008 13:57, Nimrod

Thank you, Mr. Kemist, for your clarification. Thus, my message is destroyed and his remains are sent to the Necropolis.

Go back to the topic. After reviewing my collection, I agree with Mr. mikepride's opinion that the beetle in the photo belongs to P. (C.) speciosa jousselini (G. & P.).
Only two subspecies: P. (C.) speciosa jousselini (G. & P.) and
P. (E.) affinis pyrodera (Reitt.) (or rather, some aberrations) has such a rich blue color of the underside of the body and legs, while P. (P.) cuprea ignicollis(G. & P.) has a more violet-green color. Finally, the structure of the cocoon (as far as I can see) is in favor of the former, since the cuprea group has very thick-walled cocoons and not so much ironed.
P. (E.) affinis pyrodera (Reitt.) is an extremely rare subspecies, and is distributed, moreover, in a very small area of the South of the Palearctic, even today it is little known in nature and practically absent in collections. Moreover, there can be no culture of this subspecies (otherwise I would already know about it).
Hence, we are talking about P. (C.) speciosa jousselini(G. & P.) .

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22.07.2008 15:52, Kemist

Greetings to all forum participants. I have a question about home breeding. I would like to know what methods can be used to protect the pupae of bronzes from damage by larvae that have not yet pupated. In my practice, this has happened quite often. I tried to put the larvae before pupation in separate plastic cups with a mixture of soil and wood residues, but it didn't always work - you miss the moment of seating, and the larvae chew through the cradle and have a snack with an appetite, or something else.

I planted larvae in the early stages - late L2 or early L3. Can I ask you what types of bronzes you have bred? Marbles could be removed two at a time in one glass. The lack of protein substances can be filled with pet food, such as" Chappi meat lunch " for dogs. Some types of bronzes are very willing to eat Chappi.

23.07.2008 7:29, Bukashechnik

Hello Kemist! Thank you for your advice. At the moment
, unfortunately, I have only a golden bronze in my culture. I lost other species
(marble, valgus) because I was going on a business trip, and
there was no one to look after the beetles. It was especially a pity with valgus, I just
started trying to dilute it. As a substrate for the maintenance
of bronzes, I use an oven-calcined mixture of soil and sand in
a ratio of 2: 1, to which I add crushed pieces of dry leaves and
wood of different breeds, preferably birch, sometimes oak, linden. As
I noticed, the larvae willingly eat the wilted leaves and stems
of the green tradescantia. I tried to fill the protein deficiency with a mixture of dried
gammarus and daphnia, or with dead insects (butterflies, flies, etc.), but
the larvae still eat their fellows. Imago feed honey, fruit
(very fond of bananas, large cherries, sweet pears; do not like lemons and
strawberries, apples imported from China, well, the latter I do not
like -

)), flowers. Once I tried to give a pastry marshmallow,
ate with pleasure. I try to remove food residues so that
prevent rotting (I lost my first crop in school just because of
this, some kind of fungus went on the imago and larvae, most likely
Aspergillus flavus). Moistening is done with a spray gun (2-3 times a
week, very moderately) and using a small glass funnel
inserted into the soil, and the end reaches the sandy layer of the substrate.
So that the imago has a place to climb, I use a design made of plastic
chopsticks from chupa-chups, glued together, since the pieces of wood
often turn moldy when moistened. Maybe of course I'm playing it safe, but as
they say, having burned yourself on milk, you blow on water

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30.07.2008 16:53, Трофим

By the way, potoksiy aeruzhinos happened to find a dead but intact one in Kapriyany. The staircase is big...., I also dreamed of it. Until a friend entomologist showed the most wonderful crown traps, so everything is simple, but you need to push, so to speak, put on the right path. Take a small weight and throw it over the desired branch. You secure the bait bottle (just stick the rope in the neck and twist the cap, that's all the fastening) and raise the bottle up like a flag. Inside any braga, and a window in the bottle. Traps show themselves perfectly. So far this year I haven't had a chance to try it. But there were also Potocia lugubris and Potocia affinis, from the same entomologist friend. So go ahead and fight. I'll add on my own, you can't take a lot of plastic bottles away. Therefore, it is better to completely release the air from them, and upon arrival at the place, inflate again and cut out the window.

31.07.2008 19:15, alex017

Imago feed honey
Once tried to give a pastry marshmallow,
ate with pleasure

I also fed them, but they died very quickly from this. Then I compared it: I caught some bronzes in one day and put them in two cans of 5 pieces each. In one jar he fed me honey, and in the other-only fruit purees made from fresh fruit. The first ones all died in about a month, and the second ones-when the snow was already on the street, i.e. the difference was almost 3 months.

If in your area there is a pulp and paper mill (pulp and paper mill) and a dump where waste is dumped, then you can feed the larvae with the old pulp. And without additional top dressing, the larvae of our and tropical bronzes, rhinoceros beetles grow well on this.

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