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BEES, BUTTERFLIES, BEETLES:

THE "BUGS" OF WINTER (FROGS, TOO)

#33: 1-15 March 2026

Random observations about Blue Ridge Birds & Nature

When considering wintertime nature activities, we don't typically think much about insects, those all-important but sometimes pestiferous little six-leggers that go away each year as cold weather arrives at Hilton Pond North—only to reappear in June when everything else is bustin' out all over. Their seeming absence doesn't mean they're gone, however, just hanging out in less obvious places. Many insects overwinter as eggs, hidden in deep crevices where probing bills of White-breasted Nuthatches and Carolina Wrens can't reach. Some survive and develop as grubs buried in soil, while others slumber as cocoons or chrysalises. Still more actually make it through the long hard winter as adults, wings safely folded behind a slab of bark. It's these that are able to get a head start on spring, sometimes appearing while snow still blankets our Blue Ridge landscape in early March.

Other than occasional raids by tiny, harmless Odorous House Ants, Tapinoma sessile (top photo), that smell like Ashe County Blue Cheese and come and go year-round in our comfy ridge-top cabin, we don't recall having seen any native insect life since late last November—at least not until a couple of weeks ago on a relatively warm 25 February when we heard a familiar buzzing sound on our big platform seed feeder. It was a couple of Honey Bees. In winter.

We first thought the bees were after carbohydrate-rich starch dust from cracked corn in the bird seed mix, but a better explanation is they were attracted to residual sugars or fermentation byproducts in corn itself. Honeybees survive cold months by "winter clustering." As temperatures drop below about 57°F, the colony forms a tight mass around the queen, with worker bees packing together and continuously vibrating flight muscles to generate metabolic heat—reaching temperatures up to 95°F at the core.

Bees on the outer shell act as insulation, while those inside consume stored honey to fuel this continuous heat generation as the cluster slowly eats through the honeycomb. Because bees generate their own warmth internally rather than relying solely on ambient temperature, a mild late-winter day—even in the mid-40s°F—provides enough thermal buffer for individual bees to briefly break cluster and take "cleansing flights" to void waste accumulated during weeks of confinement.

Worker bees only live about six weeks in summer, worn out by the intense labor of foraging. However, bees raised in late autumn—often called "winter bees" or "diutinus bees"—are physiologically distinct from summer counterparts. ("Diutinus" from Latin words for "long-lasting" or "continuous.") They accumulate higher levels of a protein called vitellogenin (associated with reproduction in other insects), which appears to suppress aging effects of metabolic activity and suppresses the foraging drive that burns out summer workers so quickly.

Winter bees survive 4–6 months, long enough to carry a colony to spring when a new generation of workers can be raised. Thus, a colony emerging in spring is largely composed of bees born last autumn, with the queen surviving the whole winter at the cluster's core. It's almost certain Honey Bees we saw late last month and again this week were diutinus individuals, possibly from hives maintained by neighbors a half a mile from Hilton Pond North.

Our next late winter insect seen the second week in March was a larger and showier species: A Question Mark, Polygonia interrogationis (above), a brushfoot butterfly (Family Nymphalidae). We've seen this species previously at Hilton Pond North—but never this early in the year. The Question Mark overwinters as an adult, tucked into bark crevices, hollow trees, or dense leaf litter. In upper Ashe County, these adults begin stirring on warm days quite early, making them one of the first butterflies seen flying each year. They are remarkably cold-hardy and will flit about on sunny days even when temperatures are still in the 40s.

Our third cool weather insect sighting was as different as the first two. This time it was a bulbous-bodied beetle scurrying across a sun-warmed sidewalk outside our cabin at Hilton Pond North. Because of its jet-black color and distinctive shape, we knew immediately it was in the the Blister Beetle Family (Meloidae)—most likely Short-winged Blister Beetle, Meloe angusticollis (above), although members of this family can be hard to identify to species.

This is typically is an early-spring beetle, adults emerging on first warm days of late winter when little else is stirring. Adults are strictly herbivorous, feeding on low-growing plants including clovers, buttercups, and various other forbs they consume with chewing mouthparts at a leisurely pace befitting a flightless beetle in no particular hurry. The winter was almost certainly spent underground as a pre-pupa—a quiescent, overwintering larval stage tucked into the soil, part of a remarkably complex life history (hypermetamorphosis). Earlier larval stages are parasitoids of solitary ground-nesting bees: the tiny, active first-instar larva (called a "triungulin") climbs a flower and hitches a ride on a visiting bee back to the bee's nest, where it then feeds on bee eggs and pollen provisions. Later instars form pupae in the soil for up to two years before emerging as adults.

When threatened, adults employ the classic blister beetle defense of "reflex bleeding" (auto-hemorrhaging) from their leg joints, oozing hemolymph laden with cantharidin (famously the ingredient in Spanish Fly, an alleged aphrodisiac). This powerful blistering compound deters most vertebrate predators and is genuinely dangerous to horses and livestock if beetles are inadvertently consumed in hay. Wild Turkeys are especially susceptible to the toxin, although predatory Loggerhead Shrikes are known to tolerate or detoxify cantharidin and will consume blister beetles after impaling them on thorn bushes or barbed wire.

So far we've seen Odorous House Ants, Honey Bees, a Question Mark butterfly, and a Short-winged Blister Beetle making still-cold late-winter appearances here at Hilton Pond North. They'll eventually be followed by any number of other invertebrate species. If it's all the same to them, we'd be quite happy if mosquitoes, ticks, and chiggers take their good ol' time to emerge.

As we searched many years for a North Carolina mountain property where we could establish Hilton Pond North, we told Ashe County realtor Scott Cronk certain attributes were non-negotiable and represented to us the best of mountain living: A comfortable ridge top residence, at least ten mostly wooded acres, a stream or pond, a Big Bay Rhododendron grove, Skunk Cabbage in the watershed, Common Ravens overhead, and a colony of Wood Frogs. When we moved here on 22 February 2024, all these were present—except for the latter two we wouldn't know about until later in the season. Bottom Line: Realtor Scott served us well as Wood Frogs showed up within two days of our arrival and each February since. Alas, we did "whiff" on Skunk Cabbage, neither seeing—or smelling—any in our wettest areas, but we recently found a reputable source from which we'll order to create a local population.

But let's get back to Wood Frogs, Lithobates sylvaticus, (formerly Rana sylvatica.)

Local evidence for these frogs has been both visual and auditory. We found huge masses of their eggs on Hilton Pond North back on 24 February 2024 but saw no adults; they likely had already finished late winter reproductive activity even before March arrived! Last year (2025) we searched earlier, walking toward the pond on 2 February. From nearly a hundred yards away we could hear what sounded like a big flock of ducks quacking; it turns out this was the mating call of dozens of testosterone-laden male Wood Frogs calling for females. Some of the latter had already laid eggs—a much larger mass than in '24. Within a few days the whole cacophonous crew went silent and disappeared, leaving a multitude of eggs behind.

Although external fertilization seems more hit-or-miss than penetrative copulation, it obviously works—shown below by a close-up image of just one jelly-covered egg mass. Each individual gelatinous sphere appears to contain a successfully fertilized egg because there's a black embryo within; dead or infertile eggs look white as light-colored yolk floats toward the top.

This phenomenon shows at upper right in our photo above, although that smaller dark mass of eggs was a little confusing to us, looking so different from the rest. We wondered if it might be eggs from a Spotted Salamander, Ambystoma maculatum). This is another late-winter breeder, but here in upper Ashe County the first week in March seems a bit too early. It's possible the dark mass was merely newly laid Wood Frog eggs that had not yet developed their jelly sheaths. We may never know since later attempts to find this anomalous mass were unsuccessful.

Sunset from Hilton Pond North, 08 March 2026.

As often happens, our evening view to the east on this date was just as fine as that on the western horizon. It was a quiet way to end the day after early morning March lightning and thunder, but not much rain. Nice time to be snug in our cozy little cabin. Peace.