Where do lightning bugs go in winter?
In winter, the lightning bugs wear disguises. Chances are you can find a few if you know what to look for and root around in the likely places. These are not adult insects with gauzy wings for flying in the air. They may be hungry larvae or sleeping chrysalises. Their chance to become flashing fireflies will come later, when they hatch into adult winged insects. This may be next summer or the following summer. Lightning bugs, fireflies and glow worms are really beetles. True, they do not wear the usual crisp body armor, but they have beetle type wings and chewing mouth parts. They also progress through the same four life stages. However, it usually takes these soft bodied beetles two years to progress through their egg, larva and pupa stages. The egg stage lasts only a few weeks and the winged adults may live only a few days. So most of their lives are spent as larvae or pupae. There are at least 1,500 species of this insect family Lampyridae. Most of them, including the big flashy one
