Sulphur beetle
This small darkling beetle basks openly on umbellifer flowers in full sun, and its uniform bright yellow body sets it apart from almost every other flower-visiting beetle nearby.
| Where | Sunny sand dunes and chalk grassland |
|---|---|
| Size | 7 to 9 mm body length |
| When | June to August |
The Sulphur beetle is a slender beetle 7 to 9 mm long, pale yellow across the wing cases with an orange-yellow head and pronotum, and no dark spots or bands breaking up the colour.
Adults gather on the flowerheads of umbellifers and daisies in warm, sunny weather to feed on pollen and nectar, and they favour loose, well-drained sandy or chalky ground where the soil warms quickly.
Traits
Habitat
Coast
Colour
Yellow
Active
Day
To people
Harmless to people; often seen resting openly on flowers.
Activity through the year
Often confused with
A similar elongated flower-visiting beetle but larger at 11 to 16 mm, with a black, hairy head and pronotum and reddish-brown rather than yellow wing cases.
Questions
Is the Sulphur beetle dangerous to people?
Harmless to people; often seen resting openly on flowers.
When can you see the Sulphur beetle?
The Sulphur beetle can be seen from June to August, by day.
Plate retouched from a photo by Udo Schmidt from Deutschland, CC BY‑SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons Licence
The plate on this page is shared under the same licence as its source, CC BY-SA.
Report a mistake in this entry
Beetles›Darkling beetles›Cteniopus
Last updated 2026-09-26. Every entry is checked against published sources.