They may bore into the fruit, eat a portion and make it unfit for human consumption. The picnic beetle is essentially a secondary invader of damaged plants and decomposing plant tissue, but in undamaged ear corn silks and ripe raspberries, it can be a primary invader. The strawberry sap beetle is a primary invader of ripe and nearly ripe strawberries. As a nuisance, sap beetles may congregate in annoying numbers on screen doors, around garbage cans, invade homes, backyards, picnic areas, food processing plants, and roadside fruit and vegetable stands. Larvae of all three are white.
Pupae are white, turning cream-colored and later tan before adult emergence.
All of the sap beetles in Ohio overwinter as adults in protected places such as decaying vegetation, debris or fruit buried in the ground. In the spring, picnic beetle adults come out of hibernation and mate. Egg laying begins in April and continues in May and June. Females lay 5 to 15 eggs per day, scattered at random near decomposing plant material rather than on the material itself. Larvae develop in spilled grain, feed, corn ears, waste onion piles, and soil saturated with juices and food material in contact with the soil.