What are these bugs?

try a solution of vinegar and water – 1 part vinegar to a bucket of water – apply to outside windows – this recently got rid of hornets trying to nest outside the windows – they had a late breeding season.

Sunday said :

This CSIRO site
http://csironewsblog.com/2012/11/08/insect-of-the-week-the-plague-soldier-beetle-isnt-nearly-as-bad-as-it-sounds/
says “Plague Soldier Beetle” isnt as bad as it sounds. But, if you havef thousands on your front fly wire door, thousands copulating on surrounding tree branches, courtyards walls etc they are bad!

Can anyone tell me why they choose my house to invade when I dont have native flowers, and this is the 2nd visit. I understand the female lays eggs in the soil, so what do I do to ensure they dont like my soil next summer?

Happy if someone knows the answers.

The answer is to chill out. A little copulation never hurt anybody.

This CSIRO site
http://csironewsblog.com/2012/11/08/insect-of-the-week-the-plague-soldier-beetle-isnt-nearly-as-bad-as-it-sounds/
says “Plague Soldier Beetle” isnt as bad as it sounds. But, if you havef thousands on your front fly wire door, thousands copulating on surrounding tree branches, courtyards walls etc they are bad!

Can anyone tell me why they choose my house to invade when I dont have native flowers, and this is the 2nd visit. I understand the female lays eggs in the soil, so what do I do to ensure they dont like my soil next summer?

Happy if someone knows the answers.

It looks to me you caught 2 Coleoptera’s “in the act”. To think the female Coleoptera will lay up to 2000 eggs in her life time. THEY WILL TAKE OVER THE WORLD.

As a kid, I called em Bungy beetles. Pretty sure I made that up at the time.

I remember swarms in alternative years during the early 90s. Haven’t seen them for a long time, though.

Thanks guys – Green Soldier Beetles they are! For once, Google failed me…an image search on ‘beetles australia’ didn’t show these little guys.

So are there more this year than normal, or have I just been completely blind for the past 26 years that I’ve been in Canberra? I can remember seeing plenty of spitfires, flies, and christmas beetles (sadly though, the christmas beetles were way back in the day, when as a kid I could flick my window flyscreen and send dozens of them flying!) – but never these beetles in numbers like this.

I remembered calling them stink bugs at primary school. Probably not their real name though… I don’t even remember them having a smell – just that everyone else called them that…

If they’re the slow flyers I think they are, I have fond memories of spending Spring evenings as a kid shooting them down with water pistols.

Plague or Green Soldier Beetle, Chauliognathus lugubris.

I always thought they were a type of “Pumpkin Beetles”

Deffinetly not the stinky ones though, they are more wide, flat and less colourfull.