Karen Coonce, age 9, of Gary, Ind., for her question:
Where do insects go in the winter?
Through the winter season the world of nature is very quiet. The cherry birds have departed for warmer regions. The noisy frogs and the furry woodchucks are fast as1eep under the frosty ground. There are a few owls and hungry weasels around. But most creatures have deserted the white, wintry world. Even the insects seem to have departed.
Winter, in some ways, is a fine time for a picnic. There are no pesky ants around to stea1 our food, no wasps or bees to threaten our jelly sandwiches, no mosquitos to attack us at sundown. But frosty winter weather is too cold for us to enjoy a picnic outdoors. It is also too cold for the bugs.
We share our summer months with hoards of teeming insects. There are perhaps half a million different kinds of these bitsy creatures. And each kind has its own way of life. None of the small animals can flit or flutter through the cold months. The different insets have many different ways to protect themselves from the winter while they wait for spring.
The honey bees cluster together inside their cozy hive. They seal up the drafty cracks and ration out their stores of honey to make the food last until spring brings a new crop of flowers. The monarch butterfly flutters his brown velvet wings and travels hundreds Of miles south where the winter weather is as warm as springtime.
All insects start life as eggs,, and most of these sturdy little eggs are too tough to be bothered by frost and snow. Packages of tiny grasshopper eggs lie hidden from the winter in rotting logs or buried in the frosty ground. In the fall, a mother katydid lays perhaps 100 small, oval eggs on a 1eafy twig. She dies, but her sturdy eggs sleep safely through the winter. When spring comes, they hatch into a new generation of Katydids.
Many insects grow up in four separate stages. They begin as eggs and then hatch into hungry caterpillars. These greedy grubs turn into chrysalises or silken cocoons and go through a sleeping stage. They finally hatch into fully grown parent insects. Some of these changeable insects spend the winter in the egg stage, arid some sleep safely through the cold as cocoons or chrysalises.
Only a few insects survive the winter in the caterpiltar stage or in the adult winged stage. One of these is the mosquito. This pesky creature goes through his caterpillar stage as a water dweller. The hungry little swimmer keeps busy all winter, even under the frosty ice. The lovely mourning cloak butterfly hides from the wintry weather, perhaps in a hollow tree. On a sunny morning she may flutter outside, and we see her dark, velvety wings hovering above the crispy white snow.