\n The insects are known by a variety of regional nicknames, including spang beetle, billy witch, dumbledarey, mitchamador and bummler, according to Sussex Wildlife Trust.\n<\/p>\n
\n The adults that appear in May have spent at least three years underground as creamy-white grubs, munching on the roots of grasses and cereals.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Cockchafer is also known as the Maybug (Image: Wikimedia)\n<\/p>\n
\n Ms Owen said that before modern farming practices, these larvae were a serious agricultural pest.\n<\/p>\n
\n In 1320, the beetles caused so much trouble in Avignon, France, that they were taken to court, ordered to leave the town and relocate\u2014but, unsurprisingly, none complied.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ms Owen said: “Of course, not a single cockchafer complied, and thousands were rounded up and killed.”\n<\/p>\n
\n Today, cockchafers exist in much smaller numbers.\n<\/p>\n
\n Cockchafer’s spend years underground as grubs (Image: Wikimedia)\n<\/p>\n
\n It takes three to five years for the slow-growing grubs to reach their maximum size of around 4cm before pupating in early autumn.\n<\/p>\n
\n Six months later, they emerge as adults but remain underground until spring.\n<\/p>\n
\n Once above ground, they live for only six to eight weeks, during which their sole aim is to reproduce.\n<\/p>\n
\n The beetles are clumsy fliers, often crashing into windows or wandering into homes, and rely on their large, feathered antennae to detect chemical signals from potential mates.\n<\/p>\n
\n Males have seven “leaves” on their antennae, whereas females have six.\n<\/p>\n
\n After mating, females lay up to 80 eggs deep in the soil before disappearing for good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That\u2019s according to the Sussex Wildlife Trust, which says the large beetles\u2014better known as May bugs\u2014are emerging as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-599827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}