Scary Monsters

Aw, just when you were beginning to like bugs…

This one doesn’t sting, it just looks scary and even scary monsters need some love.

Sawflies belong to the same order of insects as Bees, Wasps and Ants, the Hymenoptera but unlike the others Sawflies don’t have waists.

There are many different types of Sawfly (about 400 in the UK) and they can look very different from each other or very similar.

This is a Tenthredo Sawfly but Tenthredo is a genus. There are three species that look so similar that we can’t say which one this is. It is either T. notha, T. arcuata or T. brevicornis.

Sawflies have four wings so you can tell them apart from the True Flies (Diptera) which only have two and that includes Hover Flies. If it has got four wings it is not a Hover Fly.

Sawflies can be a serious garden pest. The larvae look like and eat like caterpillars. They have more legs than caterpillars (well prolegs, if you know the difference, the ones at the back) If it has more than five pairs of prolegs it is probably a Sawfly larvae also Sawflies tend to rear up on their back legs and wave about at you,  I am sure that you have seen a “caterpillar” do that.

Apparently pest control products that you get for caterpillars don’t work on Sawflies so you have to know the difference but I am not a gardener so you would have to look elsewhere to find out about that.

Adults feed on littler insects but they also eat nectar and pollen.

They don’t bite people.

I will take Fizz out and see if we can find something sweeter for you.