June Bugs

For the sake of little girls who abhor June bugs (May beetles) for their (supposed) pinching propensity and of farmers who detest them for the damage their grubs do crops, Department of Agriculture entomologists last week warned that the beetles will be unusually annoying this year throughout Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York.

Last year there were scarcely any June bugs in those States. That was because the beetles laid their eggs in 1927. (They prefer weedy lands or farms of small grains and timothy hay for laying.) Last year the eggs developed into grubs, which this year will turn into bugs, which next fall will deposit their store of eggs in their three-year cycle. The grubs do more farm damage than the bugs. Hence entomologists, knowing that hogs adore the juicy grubs, urge farmers to pasture swine next year in fields which are June buggy this summer.