"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...
In message , Stephen Howard
writes
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 12:54:39 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:

Courgette flowers are particularly badly affected.

Any ideas what makes them appear in such huge numbers all of a sudden?

I don't remember having this problem last year.

Are they that much of a problem then?
I rather like the contrast of shiny little black dots against the
flowers - and I've always assumed they're part of the pollination
process.

This is in an entirely different league. I am talking about so many
pollen beetles on most yellow flowers (and objects) that it is almost
impossible to tell their true colour. It looks more like something off a
sci-fi movie. (Same sort of density as you get with bad aphid
infestation on soft plant stems)

Some are on orange flowers and white washing as well.

As Magwitch has pointed out in another posting they are associated with
oilseed rape - and guess what the local landowner is harvesting at the
moment (at least when it is dry enough to put tractors on the land).

Evidently the beetles stay on the rape long after the flowers have gone.
Harvesting would appear to displace them in plague quantities. I guess
we were unlucky enough to be downwind of them this year.

At the moment it is cold and raining hard so things are a bit quieter.

Regards,
--
Martin Brown

***********
Ah!, - you mention Magwich!. Lovely memories of Charles Dickens' "Great
Expectations." In the film Sir John Mills the famous actor plays as a boy
who is suddenly confronted by Magwich (who has escaped from a prison hulk in
the Medway river), at a graveyard gravestone near Rainham.
(I've been there.) The boy goes for food for M. but M is captured and depor
ted. He sponsors the boy in secret and, having made good, M comes back but
is pursued and recaptured. He happened to have had a daughter, (played by
Valerie Hobson), who looked after Miss Faversham, a recluse.
The boy meets the girl at the recluse's house.
The boy is later an educated man and goes to see Magwich on his deathbed in
a sleazy prison, he tells Magwich he is in love with a wonderful girl and
tells him about her. Magwich realises she is *his* daughter, and dies
peacefully, comforted in the arms of the man he has sponsored and educated.
And everyone in tears including me.
They don't write 'em like that any more. I consider that book to the finest
ever and second only to "Gone with the Wind" , (and I've been to Atlanta too
and photographed the Authoress' grave.)
Doug.

***********