The Rose Chafer Beetle, a jewel in the garden. Welcome or unwelcome?

I thought I was ‘seeing things’ when I came across a rose chafer beetle (Cetonia aurata) for the first time about 3 years ago. A beautiful, iridescent green brooch in the middle of a fully open rose! How did it get there? Nothing of the sort.

I saw my first rose chafer beetle of 2020 last week. It wasn’t nesting on a rose but on a spray of elder flowers! Here it is!

The rose chafer is a large, broad beetle, 14-20mm long, with metallic coppery-green wing cases which bear small, creamy-white streaks. There is a V-shaped mark where the wing cases meet. The beetle is found in grassland, scrub and along woodland edges. The adults feed on flowers during the summer and autumn. The larvae live in the soil and take two to three years to develop, feeding on decaying leaves, plants and roots. They are important wildlife recyclers of nutrients and therefore important for maintaining natural habitats. When they pupate, they hibernate in the soil or in rotting wood over winter, ready to emerge as adults the following spring.

Rose chafer beetles are LOUD when in flight, and move rapidly in search of targets in great swirls. I always know when a rose chafer beetle is on the move nearby.

Unfortunately, these beautiful adult insects chew away at rose and other flower blossoms, destroying the display. Many gardeners consider them to be pests. I must say I’m not crazy about their handiwork either, as I want to use the flowers for culinary and other purposes. I’ve wondered what to do about them. I usually move them along nicely, knowing that they’ll only move to another bloom. I take consolation from the fact that there aren’t usually millions of them anyway. Their presence is not as worrying to me as a plague of locusts descending on my plants. Farmers have had to deal with that in parts of Africa recently. I’ll say ‘hello’, admire their beauty, and count myself lucky.