Watch out - Harlequins coming!

[RobinP]

Looks like the warm South East wind is bringing the Harelquins in, got a few in the house and a number have made home in the peg-bag

[aeshna5]

I just posted in the "plague" thread that I noticed quite a few this afternoon; the most for some months.

[Klaas Reißmann]

Hi,

Harlequins do have the habbit to start surching for their overwintering places at this time. Coming from eastern Asia where they overwinter in gaps in rock faces, they surch for white or bright coloured areas, looking similar to the rocks. So they approach on white or bright painted walls, bright coloured window frames, the bright and grey coloured bark of pinetrees or similar, dead trees with no bark and so on. The first beetles arriving detach a pheromon to attract others so the numbers of the beetles can increase very high. In Germany we had walls full with hundreds of thousands of these beetles. They crawl into the gaps between the window frames, into the roller shutter housings and so on.

I often, but not always noticed, when they do this, it is one of the last warm days of the year. Last year it was the first time, that it wasn't. But normally than the cold comes.

Regards
Klaas