Welcome back to Bug Club!

Since last time I've taken part in my first market, tried gouache painting for the first time, and furthered my progress to getting a full hysterectomy - which is a very lengthy process and needs half the hospital to sign off on since I'm 24!

This Saturday, the 27th, I'll be at my local town Pride event! This is something I've wanted to do even before I started this business, so I'm very excited and hope to potentially see some of you there!

Speaking of this week, here in the UK we are about to have a potentially record breaking heatwave, which I for one am not looking forward to at all - I don't think I've ever experienced temperatures above 32 Celsius in England, and last I checked we're going up to 40. Keep yourselves safe, utilise public spaces with air conditioning, make sure your pets are hydrated, and look out for struggling wildlife!

The Bug Spotlight!

The Large Blue Butterfly Phengaris arion This week I wanted to focus on a bug that's managed to make its way back from extinction! The Large Blue Butterfly is native to most of Europe and Great Britain and Ireland. It doesn't have one specific habitat environment, instead relying on specific food conditions: This species hugely varying but vital food sources are required to be within close distances of each other. The adults only live about two weeks, but the caterpillars have an incredibly interesting growth process. Eggs are usually laid on Wild Thyme, but must be in proximity of a myrmica ant nest - in the UK, that would be common red ants. By the fourth major growth stage of the caterpillar, it switches tactics from feeding on the host plant, to tricking these ants into thinking it is an ant grub. The ant takes the caterpillar back to the nest, where it then feeds on the ant grubs. Very often, the caterpillar will be discovered and killed by the ants, but some species of Large Blue have developed new evolutionary traits to increase survival - one in particular has the ability to mimic the sounds of the queen ant, ensuring the worker ants prioritise the caterpillars survival.

Why Does This Exist?

It is now the middle of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and all the bugs are up and active and in your garden and living room! I am a firm believer of never killing a creature unless necessary, no matter how small, and I have recently had questions from friends about how to deal with pest bugs without going scorched earth. I want to start this new section to inform you of the reasons why these hated bugs exist, and how to co-exist with them as peacefully as possible! To keep it on topic from the Spotlight, I want to talk about ants! Almost everyone has had them in their home and/or garden at some point or another, and almost everyone hates them for that, but I personally find ants fascinating! I love seeing them in my garden, watching how they work together to find food, even if it does happen to be in the form of farming aphids on my plants.

Ants are scavengers! In the wild, this means they play a role in the decomposition of plant and animal matter, helping keep the visible environment clean and adding to the soil health! Their nests and tunnels aerate the soil, which helps bring oxygen to plant roots and provides drainage! And, as stated earlier, they are also a valuable food source for other animals! They are incredibly intelligent, and communicate everything through smells - pheromones - similar to a bees flower dance, ants communicate the location of food through pheromones. They even have their own graveyards - after two days, dead ants release pheromones that signal its colony members to transport it to the graveyard. Studies have shown that covering a live ant with this pheromone will cause the ant to think it's dead, and take itself to the graveyard (the ant can then clean itself and return to normal society, don't worry!).

That all being said, an ant colony in the house is not a good thing to have. Luckily, if it's caught early, it's actually very easily dealt with! Ants usually enter a house if they find food close the entry point - in my case, it was my cat's food next to the front door. Once they find the food, they send word back to the colony, and slowly more ants arrive. Your instincts may say to get poison, but the problem with this is that yes, the ants will bring it back to the nest, but to do that they will bring half the colony to see the new food source and to help carry it home. If you've only got 10-20 ants in your house, you will just be creating more of a problem than there needs to be, and killing off an entire colony in the process.

It can be solved quite quickly and easily, but unfortunately does involve killing the ants currently in your home, so they don't tell any more ants about your house. Remove the food source from the area and kill the ants, ideally without chemicals. Next, all you need is something that smells strong, deodorant or perfume will do, essential oils work too but be careful if you have pets, and spray it liberally around the whole surface area where the ants were. You can spray this outside at the point they came inside too, for good measure. This ensures that any scent trails left by the ants are broken, meaning the rest of the colony can't follow them to come back in!

Hopefully, my ramblings have changed the way you see and interact with these cool little creatures. If you so desire, I find a fun mindfulness activity can be to place a little bit of something sweet in the path of an ant, and watch as more ants come to join them :) I just think they're neat!

Art Updates!

I have admired HIMI Gouache sets since I discovered them in college, but I've never had a chance/excuse to buy one for myself...until now! I'm so in love with the colours and how it layers - it covers as thick and vibrant as acrylic, but it blends and behaves like watercolour! If you ever see me painting at a market, this is most likely what I'll be using!

Next month, I will be taking part in Artfight, an online annual art trading game! This is something I have done yearly since 2017 as a digital character artist, but this year I will also be doing traditionally painted arts! I will be painting them on TikTok Live throughout the month, so be sure to follow me there to see the process!

As I mentioned before, I now have an active Etsy shop! To thank you for subscribing and enjoying my work, use the code BUGMAIL25 at checkout to get 25% off my originals and custom artworks!

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