The Brown June Bugs/May Beetles Are Out Already

10 years ago

I kinda wish March would act like March. Instead it is acting like April. Or May. At our house in south-central OK, the brown scarab beetles are out and swarming around the porch lights. Down here they are commonly referred to as June bugs, though we almost always see them in April or May. Some folks in OK call them May beetles to distinguish them from the green June bugs. I cannot believe they are out in March. I have seen them in April before (which, at that time, seemed incredibly early) , and one year when we warmed up early, we might have seen them in March, but calling them March bugs just sounds silly, so Tim and I keep calling them June bugs. I hope this isn't a sign of what sort of spring it is going to be. It's never good in summer when spring gets too hot too fast.

Tomorrow I'll mix up a batch of alfalfa tea or compost tea, put it in a 5-gallon bucket and leave it on the ground underneath the outdoor security light. They are, for whatever reason, attracted to this stuff and land in the bucket and drown. Some days you get a few in there, other days there's dozens or hundreds.

This is just one more thing that is happening early far too often in the last few years.

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Comments (4)

wulfletons
10 years ago
I saw my first June bug yesterday here in far NE Cleveland County. I haven't seen grasshoppers yet but I bet they are out there. I love winter and cold weather, and am so sad we didn't get much this year. I try not to worry about things I can't control, but I am just dreading the horrible summer that is probably coming!
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
10 years ago
I have seen a few grasshoppers but not a lot. I certainly haven't seen enough of them (yet) to make me dread the summer months. That doesn't mean they won't show up later, and they probably will.

I always worry about the summer that follows an El Nino. While we sometimes get neutral ENSO conditions that give us what I'd call a typical summer (which still is hot and dry, but not painfully so), we also sometimes can go into a La Nina fairly quickly following El Nino, and La Nina conditions normally do mean a horrible summer. So, even as I kinda hate that the season seems to be on fast forward already, I am planting as early as possible in order to try to beat the heat.

Of course, the early hot days do bring some wonderful things early.....wildflowers here are blooming ahead of schedule, the Purple Martins and hummingbirds both were early this year, and the cool-season crops have grown much faster than usual. It is the cool-season crops that also will suffer most if the early warm-up (not withstanding the forecast low temperatures near or below freezing for early Saturday morning) continues at the current pace. The peas already show signs of misery on hot days, and I want for the lettuce plants to last as long as possible, so my hope is that April weather stays mild and doesn't get too hot too early. Yesterday our youngest cat was playing with a non-venomous snake, and I hate that. I don't want him to think a snake is a plaything because we tend to see more venomous ones here than nonvenomous. I definitely am not amused that we have had snakes out as early as February. That is just so wrong.

To be fair to the early heat, our cool-season crops mostly look like it is late April as the heat has made them grow so fast, and I do like that. Still, it seems like an omen of a hot, hot, hot summer.
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leava
10 years ago
where is the dislike button ??
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
10 years ago
If there were a dislike button for the dratted brown March/April/May/June scarab beetles, I'd push it too! I hate them. They congregate around porch lights and other outdoor lights and try to get inside every time we open a door. Maybe some of them will freeze to death tonight.