Your chance to win

To send your vote and enter our prize draw, please fill in your details
(we need at least your name and email address), then press the Send Vote button.

Bumblebees are our furriest and most endearing insects, and their gentle buzz is an integral part of a summer’s day. But their bumbling placid appearance is deceptive: they are among the hardest-working, cleverest and most valuable of our insects. They navigate across miles of countryside using learned landmarks, the sun and a magnetic compass; they learn how to get into complicated flowers to find rewards; and they keep going in strong wind and rain, even in freezing spring air. Without their pollination, many food crops would fail to yield, and many species of wild flowers would disappear. We underestimate the importance of the humble bumblebee at our peril!

Ladybirds are probably everybody’s favourite beetles, and the distinctive 7-spot ladybird is the best known of them. Indeed the 7-spot’s appearance is believed to be the origin of the name ladybird (Our Lady’s bird), with its brightly-coloured wing-cases matching the red cloak that Mary was traditionally depicted wearing in old Christian paintings and the seven spots symbolizing Mary’s ‘seven joys and seven sorrows’. This ladybird is a voracious predator of aphids and so gives great joy, and no sorrow, to gardeners and farmers. These beetles are, of course, very easily ‘spotted’ in the garden, especially if there is a nearby nettle patch to nurture them in the spring, along with butterflies.

Which insect: pollinates up to a third of the food crops we eat; makes sweet aromatic honey; also ensures the survival of wild flowers and many other plants by its pollination; constructs amazing honeycomb nests from wax it makes itself; lives in complex social colonies that can last for several years under the leadership of one queen; tells its sisters where to find good food by performing an intricate waggle dance; defends the nest against intruders (if necessary, sacrificing itself by using its sting); and has been revered throughout history as a model of co-operation, hard work, productivity and industry? The honey bee, of course – surely the best-known good insect.

The formidable-looking minotaur beetle, found mainly on moors and mountains in the north and west of Britain, is one of nature’s vast but largely-unnoticed army of insect recyclers of dung. It is usually seen on rabbit middens and sheep droppings, often with the related dor beetles. Only the males have long conspicuous prongs on the thorax, which they use to compete for females. Without the activities of such dung beetles, and other dung-recycling insects, we would all have to be much more careful about where we tread.

As well as stunning good looks, these aerial acrobats are also incredibly helpful. They neither bite nor sting humans: the appendages on their tails are for mating and egg-laying only. These dragonflies act as indicators of good water quality and thriving ecosystems, and they are telling us about climate change too. If that isn’t enough, their staple diet is mosquitoes and midges, so their presence can reduce the spread of diseases. Who ever would have thought that healthcare could be so beautiful and entertaining to watch?

Biting midges are a significant nuisance to humans and can disrupt outdoor activities, including tourism, especially in Scotland. They can also act as vectors of important livestock diseases. The biting midge Culicoides obsoletus is believed to transmit the bluetongue virus. This virus, now widespread throughout Europe, causes a potentially fatal disease of ruminants (sheep, goats, cattle and deer) but cannot be transmitted directly between animals, only via the midges. The midges can, in suitable weather conditions, be carried more than 200 km in air currents and this is probably how the disease was recently introduced into the UK. Bluetongue poses a serious threat to livestock production in Europe and it’s all because of these midges!

Aphids are the number-one pests of farm crops and garden plants, causing millions of pounds worth of damage each year by sucking sap and transmitting viruses. Chief amongst these villains is the peach-potato aphid, which has developed resistance to most insecticides. In spite of its name, it attacks many different crops, and it transmits over 120 plant viruses. Aphids give birth without the need to mate and can build up huge numbers very quickly. Starting with a single individual, a layer 150 km deep covering the whole Earth could result from the twenty or so generations produced in a year, if all the offspring survived – fortunately most don’t!

The harlequin is the most invasive ladybird on earth. It only arrived in south-east England in 2004, but is already well-established throughout England and Wales, and was first reported in Scotland and Northern Ireland in 2007. Like many other ladybirds it eats aphids. However, it has such a voracious appetite that it out-competes our native ladybirds, and if there are not enough aphids available it attacks other insects, including other ladybirds. Harlequins also cause nuisance by gathering inside houses to overwinter, often in hundreds but sometimes in thousands. This invader has become a serious pest and is threatening some of our native ladybird species with substantial decline or extinction.

The stable fly is a native biting fly with mouthparts like a small syringe. It uses this pointed proboscis to pierce the skin of large mammals and suck their blood. Unlike many other flies that feed on blood, such as midges (where only the female blood-feeds to develop her eggs), both sexes of Stomoxys will bite.

Once almost extinct in Britain, the bedbug has recently made an incredible comeback. Few people know what this species looks like, but it is a biological marvel in the tricks it uses to survive and reproduce. This insect drinks human blood ... and it drinks a lot. A single (usually once-weekly) blood-meal weighs three times the bedbug’s own body weight. The result is a red mark and an itch ... and embarrassment (even though bedbug infestations occur in smart mansions and crowded tenements alike). Bizarrely, in order to reproduce, male bedbugs use their needle-like genitalia to inject sperm through the female’s skin. As the saying goes: “Night night, Sleep tight, Mind the bugs don’t bite”.

By day she would hardly win a beauty contest. Some might even say she is a very plain and drab little thing. But after dark on a warm summer’s evening the female glow worm puts on a show that nobody could ever forget... The glow worm is in fact a beetle, and the wingless female produces a greenish light on the underside of her abdomen to attract males. She switches the bioluminescent glow on and off by controlling the interactions of complex chemicals in her body. The glow is about as bright as a small LED indicator, so you will have more chance of seeing the glow worm’s amazing display on a calm dry night in areas well away from light pollution.

The winter has dragged a bit. Mid-March arrives and, on a clear sunny day, the first butterfly – usually the magnificent sulphur-yellow male brimstone. Spring is here! Most of our butterflies would be good candidates for the ‘beautiful’ category, but the brimstone’s bright simplicity is spectacular, and it brings such good tidings. These butterflies will have emerged as adults the previous August, hibernated through the winter and they will live until June. No other British butterfly spends anywhere near as long as an adult.

Aquatic and aerial, ephemeral and beautiful – nowhere else in the insect world has immaculate elegance and perfect design been reached so early on the evolutionary ladder as in the dragonflies, with their 325-million year pedigree. They display incredible aerobatic skill as well as being beautifully marked and superbly constructed. The four-spotted chaser is common and widespread in Britain (except in north-east England), and it’s easy to see, being over 4.5 cm long with a wingspan of over 7.5 cm. The males are very territorial and adopt a perch near the water’s edge from which they patrol their area to find females and chase rival males at amazing speeds.

The metallic blue-green body of the male of this damselfly flashes in the sun as it jealously patrols its guarded territory beside a river or canal. Its dark wing-patches add to the spectacle of its beautiful fluttering flight – a dance designed to attract the shining green females of the species. Soon after, they may be seen locked in a head-to-tail mating loop – a two-tone bracelet of gleaming blue and green splendour – before the female lays her eggs on the stems of water-plants. The nymphs develop underwater for over two years before they re-emerge and change into graceful winged adults to perform the dance of life once more.

This elegant tiger beetle wears a coat of British racing green with five or six rich cream spots on each wing-case, and with metallic coppery-purple fringes to match its legs and antennae. You need sharp eyes to appreciate its splendid coloration, though, because it is a very fast hunter, running over the ground on long slender legs, and it flies away rapidly if disturbed. It is mainly found on heaths and other areas with sandy soils, where its larvae live in burrows ready to pounce on passing prey.

Despite their metallic green colour, adult greenbottles are not particularly attractive, especially since they visit dung and lay their eggs on carcasses. But their larvae, or maggots, are certainly unpleasant in appearance and also in habit, feeding on dead or dying flesh, though anglers find the maggots of one species useful as bait.

Another species commonly causes blowfly strike in sheep, which can be fatal. However, this same species can be used medicinally for maggot therapy to aid the healing of wounds. When applied to a flesh wound, the maggots clear away dead tissue and bacteria, and stimulate healthy tissue to heal. In recent studies, maggot therapy has proved very effective for rapid treatment of MRSA.

This distinctive sinister-looking rove beetle, often found on carrion or under logs, is one of our most menacingly ugly insects. Black and elongate (2–3 cm), it has very short wing-cases that expose its flexible abdomen. When disturbed, it raises its tail in a scorpion-like posture, produces a bad-smelling liquid and opens wide its large sharp mandibles. Ignore this threatening display at your peril – the mandibles can give you a painful nip, and may sometimes even draw blood. However, as well as feeding on carrion, this beetle is a fearsome predator and thus a gardener’s friend, devouring many garden pests.

Ladybird adults are widely known as attractive brightly-coloured beetles but their larvae look very different, being grub-like and often spiky. Some of the larvae are strikingly coloured, or decorated with delicate hairy fronds, but the kidney-spot larva is really ugly. It has short legs and moves slowly because it preys on crawling or immobile scale insects. Its stout body is covered with black barbed spines. However, during its equally unattractive pupal stage it changes – like the ‘Ugly Duckling’ – into the handsome adult, emerging initially with bright-red wing-cases that then darken to shining black except for its two distinctive kidney-shaped red spots.

The bloody-nosed beetle is ugly by name – from its unpleasantly messy habit of defending itself by producing a bright-red blob of distasteful liquid when attacked or disturbed – and it certainly wins no beauty contests with its bulky form and slow bumbling gait. Its larvae are no prettier, being black and slug-like. But ugliness, like beauty, is often skin-deep and these large portly beetles do no harm (except to the bedstraw plants they feed on) as they bumble peacefully around grassland in southern Britain, immune to predators such as birds that are repelled by the ‘blood’.

The deer ked (or deer fly) is a parasitic biting fly. It is small (5 mm long), brown and ugly, with sharp forward-pointing mouthparts for sucking blood and strong legs with curved tarsal claws for gripping its host. Newly-emerged adults have a pair of fully-developed wings, just so that they can fly from A to D ... D for deer, that is. Once on their host, they shed their wings and start burrowing through the fur. Their body is flat and elastic, making their removal difficult. In the UK, the preferred hosts are usually roe, red or fallow deer. The fly can be a nuisance, but rarely bites humans. However, a recent report from Norway described large numbers of these flies attacking moose and causing the deaths of several.