Can you solve a 40 year mystery?

valleyforge · #1 (**permalink**) 22-04-2010, 04:04 PM

Hi folks,

I'm hoping someone might help me put to rest something that's been 'bugging' me for around forty years or so ...

Let me set the scene ... the location was Aberdeenshire, mid-Deeside, on a field-access track adjacent to the (at that time fairly quiet) main road between the towns of Banchory and Aboyne. The immediate surroundings were rough pasture land, with some heather and stands of birch and aspen.

I was in my mid-teens and had travelled by car with my parents and younger of brothers from just outside of Aberdeen, for a Sunday drive into 'the country'.

I seem to recall it being a warm, sunny, windless day (so for this location it probably means it was either late June or maybe mid-August ... we tend to get so few days like that

).

Anyway, by the track edge I spotted a flying insect I didn't recognize. It was behaving in the manner of a bumble bee and flying/hovering from flower to flower in an untidy stand of brambles and (I think) rose-bay willow herb by the track edge. I then spotted 2 others within just a couple of feet of the first one.

At first I thought they must be some form of bee or wasp, as that's what they most resembled ... clearly segmented head, thorax, and an elongated abdomen which was 'furred' in the same manner as a bumble bee ... I seem to recall that the predominant colour of this 'fur' was gingerish, but I honestly don't remember now any patterning. There was a single pair of clear wings, again quite bee or wasp-like. Overall body length was in the order of an inch to inch and a half.

Now all of that might have been fairly unremarkable, except for what I observed next. The first insect I had spotted alighted on a leaf, opened a smallish, squareish, carapace and proceed to fold away its wings into what seemed an improbably tight space ... almost as if it had bi-folded its wings in the way aircraft carrier planes do before stowage.

Does this description ring any bells with anyone? Do any hymenoptera have carapaces/wing cases? Apologies if I'm not using the correct terminology ... clearly insects have never been my prime area of study.

I spent quite a lot of time, shortly afterwards combing through all the reference books available at the central library, and have scanned through lots of illustrated books of british insects since without finding anything closely similar, so I'm assuming they weren't anything very common ... and of course in the intervening 40 years, I've never encountered anything similar to them again.

I hope some of you good people can help before the memory of this fades for ever from my aged brain ... or I have to accept it as evidence of parallel-universe theory.

Jason Green · #2 (**permalink**) 22-04-2010, 04:17 PM

Afternoon VF,

If the wings were put into the body and as such dissappeared from view - it must be a beetle really, in my opinion. Look up Trichius fasciatus, the Bee Chafer on account of the bee-like colouration, hairy colouration and has wing cases where it would hide the wings. It is, at least now, rare but shows a good Scottish presence.

This is probably well off the mark but worth a shot - I have thers to suggest, but a colour drawing uploaded to our Image Archive would be excellent.

Take care,

Jason

valleyforge · #3 (**permalink**) 22-04-2010, 04:32 PM

Wow Jason ... fast response and for sure that looks like a possible candidate.

Certainly seems consistent with the observed behaviour, range and habitat.

However I seem to recall these being quite a bit more elongated in the abdomen than the photos I've just found for T. fasciatus. Is there a regional or sexual variation for that possibly?

Jason Green · #4 (**permalink**) 22-04-2010, 04:36 PM

A longer abdomen? OK, try: Clytus arietis - though it isn't notably hairy. OK, so it has hairs across the elytra, but not to the extent that you'd notice it without a magnifying glass/microscope.

What were the antennae like?

Meta menardi · #5 (**permalink**) 22-04-2010, 04:54 PM

To suggest you go back and take a photo would tax your inventive resources.

First build a time machine...

valleyforge · #6 (**permalink**) 22-04-2010, 04:56 PM

Nope ... that one's not even close.

The Bee Beetle comes as close as anything I have seen to be honest, and I'm prepared to accept that there might just be some disparity between what I can remember and what I can clearly remember. It was a long time ago.

The antennae seemed to me to be bee-like, fairly short ... and sorry I don't think I could draw anything more clearly than I've described it.

You are a marvel Jason ... unless you have any further suggestions I'd be happy to accept them as having been Trichius fasciatus.

Cheers mate, I'm much obliged.