DO NOT TOUCH: Blister beetles showing up in Kamloops, Okanagan gardens
Gardeners in Kamloops and the Okanagan are busy protecting their garlic and chives from a voracious little beetle this spring.
Cathy Holland of Kamloops found numerous beetles in her patch of 10,000 garlic plants in recent years and still sees them every spring.
“They are blister beetles and they loved my garlic,” Holland said. “I just kept checking and stepping on them. Make sure you don’t get them on your skin or let your animals eat them. They cause burns. These things are a nightmare.”
Photos of the beetles taken by a fellow Kamloops gardener were sent to Dr. Rob Higgins in the Department of Biological Sciences at Thompson Rivers University, who confirmed in an email the unwanted supper guest is a blister beetle, specifically a short-winged blister beetle (meloe angusticollis).
He said he gets enquiries about the beetle every spring, and this year is no different.
“The adults normally emerge in the spring and are fairly common here and throughout much of B.C.,” he said. “The larvae are predators of bees where they climb plants and hitch a ride on a bee back to the nest.”
If bothered, the beetles secret an odourless substance called cantharidin which will blister the skin.
“These are best left untouched, or if handled, handled gently with subsequent hand washing,” Higgins said. “The adults do eat a wide variety of plants including garden plants. They live for about three or four months.”
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For those wanting to control the beetles in their gardens, Higgins suggested simply removing them by hand, with gloves on.
“It would be uncommon to have enough of these to be a serious problem, but that could occur in a garden,” he said.
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