Kid's Activity: Insects in Winter
by Melissa Jaramillo and Julie Snyder
When the weather turns cold and frost and snow are covering the ground, where are the insects? Do they go south where it's warm? Or look for cozy winter homes? Or hibernate? Or lay eggs for spring and die? Insects do all these things. In our activity today, we'll be looking for places insect have spent the winter months.
What you'll need:
• Potting soil
• Large jar or container
• Flashlight
• Stick
• Old nylon and large rubber band
• Adult with pruning shears or knife
• Magnifying glass
• Notebook and pencil
What you'll do:
Dress warmly if it's cold outside. Put your stuff in a bag or bucket and let's get started. We'll be snooping around looking for signs of bugs and spiders. What might you expect to see? Did you guess eggs or cocoons or sleeping adult insects? Good job! Find a large tree. Without removing the bark, which can damage the tree, use your magnifying glass to look in the crevices or deep valleys in the bark. Write about your observations in your notebook or draw pictures of what you saw.
There are many other places that might provide shelter for insects during the cold winter. Look in and under dead logs. Gently move aside piles of leaves and clumps of grass. Often shingles, worn wood around windows or cracks between bricks form a comfortable winter home. Use your flashlight and a stick for probing. Were you able to find active or hibernating adult insects? How about eggs and cocoons?
Look at these pictures. See the strange shaped growths? They are called galls. A gall is a swelling on the leaf or stem of a plant. Inside this swelling an insect is living. Only six orders of insects make galls: Coleoptera (beetles), Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies), Homoptera (aphids), Thysanoptera (thrips), Diptera (flies), and Hymenoptera (sawflies and wasps). Galls can be colorful and unusual shapes, but all galls are made of growing plant tissues.
Now we know that they are homes for insects, but long ago galls were said to have special properties and were used in ointments and medicines. Galls were used in the 1700s in France to control fevers. Today they aren't used medically except in a few ointments. Galls have been used as a spice though. In the Near East, a gall on Salvia pomifera (a variety of sage), "pomme de sauge", is aromatic and acidic in flavor and is used with honey for cooking. Did you know that most galls taste similar to the host plant?
Look for galls on trees, shrubs and other species. Where do you find galls? On every kind of plant -- on leaves, stems, roots, buds, and flowers. Over 20 different insects make galls on oak trees alone! Collect several different types. If you find a pine cone on a willow tree, this is an excellent sample to bring inside the end of February or early March to follow the insect's development. To collect, find a gall without an exit hole and cut 4-6" section of the supporting twig at a diagonal. Place in your bug jar as described below.
To prepare and maintain your bug jar:
- Put a layer of potting soil into a jar, or a milk carton with holes cut in two sides.
- Put one end of the twigs into the dirt.
- Cover the jar with cheesecloth or stocking secured by a rubber band, or slide the milk carton into a stocking and tie the ends.
- Moisten the dirt occasionally.
- Keep the galls out of direct sunlight.
Another way to observe development is to first carefully slice the gall lengthwise, but a little off-center so as not to injure the larva in the chamber. Then, if you tease the chamber open you'll discover the pink larva at rest. If the open gall is kept in a jar with a small wad of wet cotton the insect will transform into a pupa within a few days, and then change again into its adult form a week or so later.
