Beetles are always included in lists of pollinators. In fact, it is likely beetles were the first pollinators, moving pollen between flowers in some of the earliest flowers.
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| beetle on a daisy flower |
Beetles are insects in the order Coleoptera, the largest of all orders, with about 400,000 species. As flower-visitors, they are looking for food, eating pollen, chewing petals, drinking nectar. Pollen adheres to their bodies and then brushes onto the flower's stigma to self-pollinate or be carried to the next flower for cross-pollination.