We arrived home last night from our Memorial Day Weekend travels to discover our green eggs had hatched.
“Hey, Inadvertent,” yelled Steve from the kitchen. “Did you see what happened to your pets while we were away?”
The eggs were no longer green, but clear, with tiny brown bodies—just bigger than the head of a pin—laying atop the shells inside the plastic bottle.
“Do you think they’re dead?” I asked. “They’re not moving.”
“Let’s look,” said Steve, and I followed him out to our front porch, where he dumped the contents of the bottle out onto the flat railing.
We stared. The five or six insects that had survived did not move.
“Those aren’t caterpillars,” I said. “Definitely not moths or butterflies.”
Steve poked them with a stick, and they wriggled.
“They’re baby bean leaf beetles!” I said. “Look at their markings!”
Steve looked closer and concurred. “What do you want to do with them?”
“Crush ‘em,” I said.
And he did. He used his thumb, just like my Dad suggested.
Photo credit: Steve McNutt
on May 30th, 2006 at 11:15 am
Aaaack! Well at least you know what Bean Leaf Beetle eggs look like now and so do the rest of us.
on May 30th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
Wow, I just sent a photo of the same kind of eggs to whatsthatbug.com to see if they knew what they were. I never saw what hatched…maybe they’re killing my spicebush roots as we speak. Thanks for educating me.
Tim
on May 30th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
I’m happy to provide a little bit of a public service, Steven, since I’m surely relying on every other gardener out there to help me answer my own questions! :-)
Tim, I sent our photo to whatsthatbug.com, too, but hadn’t seen anything posted yet. I’ll send them a message to let them know we discovered the answer. Love your photos!
:-) Genie
on Oct 9th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
[...] Update: Mystery solved! [...]