Antenna 50 (1) Highlight – Insects in the News: Bembecia ichneumoniformis – Six-belted Clearwing
Article by Richard Harrington, with the help of material from Hugh Loxdale, Stuart Reynolds and Dafydd Lewis. October to December 2025
By the time you are reading this, Christmas will be a distant memory, but I’m writing on the seventh day thereof, and the swans are a-swimming. Did you have a Christmas tree? Well, you were lucky. “Festive spruces threatened by an evil weevil”, a Daily Telegraph headline read, blaming a ban on insecticides. The “tiny bug” in question is, ironically, the Large Pine Weevil (Hylobius abietis). Saplings are vulnerable and the stripping of bark can be fatal. One forest manager said: “without active management, weevils can wipe out entire stocks”.
A Christmastide staple is the World Dart’s Championships, but this year’s was interrupted numerous times by the ‘Ally Pally Wasp’. As our very own Adam Hart explained to The Daily Telegraph, “when queens enter warm places, they potentially don’t go into hibernation or they get revived and become active”.
MI6 Chief (‘C’), Blaise Metreweli, gave her first speech on 15th December. The Daily Telegraph devoted three paragraphs to her thoughts on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and nine paragraphs to her large and colourful broach, a bee motif. There was speculation as to what hidden messages this conveyed and whether it contained any “high tech concealments”, alongside a huge picture of Miss Moneypenny, wearing a remarkably similar broach in Octopussy.
The most widely reported entomological story of the quarter in the UK was the invasion of Harlequin Ladybirds (Harmonia axyridis) into homes in early October. Naming no names, but the stories ranged from the deranged (“bugs forced their way in when she opened a window to let the cat in”) via the sensationalist (“petrified Brits say their houses are swarming with beetles”) to wise words from our former president and ladybird queen.
Researchers from Florida have identified the DNA of 86 species of animal from blood sucked by 21 species of mosquito (The Independent). The prey included frogs, bald eagles, rattlesnakes, tortoises (you’d think they’d be protected), alligators, otters and deer. “No species is safe.” “Mosquitos found in Iceland for first time as climate crisis warms country” (The Guardian). Watch out, you Arctic Foxes!
The National Trust’s Wicken Fen nature reserve has reported its 10,000th species, the Six-belted Clearwing moth (Bembecia ichneumoniformis) (The Daily Telegraph). Congratulations on this amazing milestone. The NT reckons that Wicken Fen is the most biodiverse recorded reserve in the UK.
Image: Six-belted Clearwing (Bembecia ichneumoniformis) male (La Thuile, Aosta, Italy). Credit: Hectonichus, CC-SA 4.0; reproduced from wikipedia.org. Link to Creative Commons.org/Licenses
Limb repairs and replacements have increased the mobility of countless people. Now, a Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) has been given a new lease of life with a wing transplant. I kid you not. According to The Independent and CBS News, a member of the public took an injured butterfly to the Sweet Briar Nature Centre in New York, where a wing from a dead butterfly was attached. The recipient apparently continued its migration towards Mexico. In return, insects can support surgery on humans. Researchers at Heriot-Watt University have suggested that the way in which the ovipositor of sawflies cuts into plants whilst avoiding their “key functions and tubing” (The Daily Telegraph) could have applications in surgery. They have scaled up the sawfly’s cutting mechanism 400 times and tested it on a material that mimics human tissue.
They found that it only cut into what was safe. “This could lead to methods by which surgeons no longer have to work in blood-soaked environments.” This is undoubtedly the first report I’ve included from Colin Stuart’s Astronomy Club. Apparently, entomophagy has gone into space. In 2022, the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut, Samantha Cristoforetti, took with her a blueberry cereal bar made with cricket flour. “Who knows?”, says Colin, “the first colonists on Mars might dine on space-farmed insects”. I’m sure Elon will be delighted!
Bumblebees can read Morse code to find food. Oh yes! As reported in Earth.com, researchers at Queen Mary University of London built a maze where bees encountered two flashing circles, one emitting short flashes, the other long flashes. Only one led to a sugar reward, whilst the other led to a substance distasteful to bees. The position of each circle was regularly changed so that the bees could not rely on location. Once the bees had learned the associations, the sugary reward was removed, and most bees went straight for the flash duration that once gave them sugar.
And finally, Pope Leo has seen the light. He has appointed the Right Reverend Richard Moth as the 12th Archbishop of Westminster and leader of Catholics in England and Wales. I’m sure that entomologists everywhere will wish Archbishop Moth well in his new role – just mind the candles.
Hero Image: Six-belted Clearwing (Bembecia ichneumoniformis) male (La Thuile, Aosta, Italy). Credit: Hectonichus, CC-SA 4.0; reproduced from wikipedia.
Thank You for 50 Years
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