Bugs are everywhere in most settings. Even in the most pristine futuristic conditions, you could probably catch some sort of cockroach running by. Insects make great monsters and vicious killers, but some bugs are useful to humans and these will be the ones under discussion, along with some of the more interesting bug concepts that could be introduced.

Products

Bees

If you have mead in the setting, you have honey, and honey means bees. Most honey is created by a specific genus of bees known as Apis. There are other honey producers, but the product is distinctly different.

Honey. Honey is nectar gathered by honeybees, swallowed, regurgitated, and then stored as a primary food source in wax honeycombs inside a bee hive. Beekeepers encourage overproduction so a portion can be taken from the hive without starving the bees. Before beekeeping became a practice, people would steal from wild hives without worrying about consequences other than stings. Honey collection likely began 10,000 years ago according to some cave paintings, but beekeeping came soon after, about 4000 BCE, and is mentioned in Ancient Chinese texts and evidenced in Mesoamerica.

Honey was big in most ancient cultures, being a source of sugar. Ancient Egyptians and Middle Eastern people also used it in embalming. In Hindu it was one of the five elixirs of immortality and they have a ritual where honey is poured over the statues of the deities. The Jews regarded honey as kosher, although the bee itself is nonkosher. Honey is reference several times in the Bible. The Prophet Muhammad recommended honey for its nutrition and healing purposes. Most cultures also used it as a medicine, mainly in topical applications or for sore throats and coughs.

Beeswax. Beeswax was man’s first plastic in many ways. Moldable and reworkable, beeswax was used as a mold for sculpture- and jewelry- making, and is still used today by artists and dentists. Wax tablets were used to take down notes by secretaries. The Egyptians used beeswax in shipbuilding and the Romans used it to waterproof wall paintings.

By medieval times it could be used as a form of currency. Beeswax was important in bowmaking, for strengthening and preserving thread, and as a component of sealing wax. It was used in Oceania for making the mouthpiece of the didgeridoo and the frets on a Philippine lute. The beeswax has been used for hundreds of years as a sealant or lubricant for bullets in cap and ball and firearms that used black powder. Beeswax was the original stabilizer for the military explosive Torpex, before a petroleum-based product was used.

Game Design: Most households the characters visit from Bronze age-eras to the late medieval period should have beehives or workers that harvest honey. It is a good career choice for many people in these societies and bee product sellers would be present as much as anyone else.

Silkworms

Another big product that will likely be seen in Sword & Sorcery/Medieval game settings is silk. Although silk can be created by a number of creatures of the insect kingdom, it is the mulberry silkworm of the Bombyx genus that formed and continues to dominate the textile industry.

The commercially reared silkworms are fed mulberry leaves until they pupate. The pupae are killed by dipping them in boiling water before the adults emerge, or by piercing them with a sharp needle. It is said the empress Leizu, the 14-year-old wife of the Yellow Emperor, had a silkworm cocoon fall in her tea. While extracting it she began unraveling it and, realizing its potential, tried to weave it. The silk was originally kept for the Kings of China but eventually spread throughout China and beyond.

The major trade routes became known as the Silk Road. The secrets of the silkworm were discovered by Korea in 200 BCE and India by 300 AD. It should be important to note that Muslim men are forbidden to wear silk, but they continued the trade further west. By the 13th century Italian silk was all the rage.

To produce one kilogram of silk takes 104 kilograms of mulberry leaves eaten by 3000 silkworms. One kimono takes 5000 silkworm cocoons. Many animal rights activists of the modern century have criticized the process, since artificial silks are available, and Mahatma Gandhi believed it was against the Ahimsa philosophy and suggested “wild silk” from already opened cocoons be promoted instead, although the strands are damaged.

Game Design: In certain regions, the production of silk could be a highly guarded secret that some countries would kill for. In other societies in fantasy land, the silk clothing they are offered as gifts may not come from silkworms at all. It would be great for the player characters to be sent in to steal some silk producers and find out this particular silk is from cow-sized carnivorous spiders.

Cochineal and Lac Products

Cochineal Dye: These are scale insects from which crimson dyes called carmine are derived. These parasites live in South America and Mexico and feed off the cactus Opuntia’s moisture and nutrients. The insect produces carminic acid as a deterrent against predators, but this substance can be abstracted from the insect’s body and eggs and mixed with aluminum and calcium salts to make carmine of cochineal dye. This dye was used in Central America by Aztecs and Mayans in the 15th century for coloring fabrics and became an important source for red dye during the colonial period

Lac Dye: Lac is the scarlet secretions from a number of scale insects found in India, Thailand, China, and Mexico. The use of lac dye goes back to ancient times, used in India as a skin dye and for wool or silk. In China it was used on leather.

Shellac: Shellac was a resin secreted by female lac bugs on trees in India and Thailand. Processed and sold as dry flakes and then reprocessed with alcohol to make liquid shellac for use as a primer, sealant food glaze, and wood finish. It was once used to make phonograph records. The earliest known use was 3000 years ago, but it is likely that it was used earlier than that. According to the Mahabharata, an entire palace was made of shellac. It takes about 100,000 lac bugs to make 500 grams of shellac flakes.

Game Design: Considering its consistent use, this could be an interesting background choice for a player character or an interesting rich merchant to introduce to the PCs. Have them spend a day collecting resin for processing to work off a debt or get some extra cash.

Edibility

Oh, yes, really. Insects as food should be introduced to EVERY game that takes place, in my opinion. A total of 1417 species of insects have been recorded as food items by over 3000 ethnic groups. It’s natural and a fun break from everyday moments of gaming. Plus, if you time it right (just as snacks arrive), it lends a whole new meaning to the word, “Roll for Strength.”

Honeypot Ants

Five genera of ants will select certain members to become gorged with food until their abdomens swell enormously, becoming living larders for the rest of the clan. Where they are found in Australia, they are used as an occasional sweet snack by Aboriginal peoples. There is even a honeypot ant creation story in the Dreaming.

Leafcutter Ants

This is one of the largest of the leafcutters. Called “hormiga culona” (big-bottomed ant) or bachaco and is found from Columbia south to Paraguay. The ants are harvested for nine weeks during the rainy season and are often used as traditional gifts during weddings. Only the queens are collected during their mating flights; the rest of the ants are inedible. The legs and wings are removed, and the ants are soaked in salt water and then roasted in ceramic pans. It is believed pre-Colombian cultures started these traditions. Since global trade, it’s become an export to Canada, England, and Japan, leading to small-time income resources for peasants and a reduction in the ant population.

Tree Ants

Mexican cuisine also serves escamoles, which are the larvae of the tree ants that live in the roots of the agave or maguey plants in Mexico. Also known as insect caviar, they have a cottage cheese consistency and taste buttery, yet slightly nutty. Often served on tacos with guacamole, the guacamole prevents the escamoles from falling out.

Giant Water Bugs

Also known as Toe-biters, these nasty carnivorous bugs occur worldwide, but are found mainly in North America, South America, and East Asia. From 2 to 12 cm, they are known for playing dead and then biting painfully at handlers. The bite is considered one of the most painful among insects, its saliva can dissolve muscle. They are a popular food in Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam, compared to sweet scallops or shrimp. The extract from the male’s pheromone-producing sacs is used as a flavoring.

Silkworms

Beondegi is a popular snack food in Korean cuisine, essentially of steamed or boiled silkworm pupae seasoned and served by street vendors as well as restaurants and drinking establishments. Roasted silkworms are also sold on the streets of China, and have been proposed as the ideal space snack for long-term missions.

Bogong Moths

A temperate night-flying moth common throughout southern Australia. Indigenous Australians living in Southeastern Australia collect fallen bodies from those stunned or burnt by torches and roast them with ceremonies, although this is no longer practiced in modern day.

Zygaena Moths

Children from the Carnia region of Italy catch and eat the moths in the early summer, supplying a convenient source of sugar.

Pandora Pinemoth

Native to the western United States, the larvae feed on pine trees. The Paiute people in California’s Owens Valley and Mono Lake areas harvest, prepare, and store the Pinemoth larvae as a preferred food, called piuga. Collected at their largest in July, they are roasted, washed, sorted, and dried. When ready to be eaten they are reconstituted in boiling water and eaten as a finger food (except for the head). The cooking water is used as a stew base.

Mopani or Mopane Worm

This moth caterpillar is large and found throughout the grasslands and semi-deserts of South Africa. They are handpicked by the women and children, pinched at the tail end to rupture the innards, then squeezed like toothpaste and whipped around to expel the guts. Generally, the mopani is sun-dried or smoked to better preserve it. They can be found in rural markets throughout southern Africa. They can be eaten raw, although natives avoid the head, or it can be fried. It is nutritious, but tasteless (like dried wood), and is often packed in tomato sauce or chili sauce for better flavor.

Witchetty Grub

Central Australian larvae of several species of moths usually found on the witchetty shrub. The term has been known to apply to other grubs and larvae. The grubs were a staple in the diets of Aboriginal women and children. Edible raw or lightly cooked in hot ashes, they are said to taste like almonds and when cooked the skin becomes crisp like roast chicken while the insides become yellow.

Huhu Beetle

This is the largest endemic beetle of New Zealand. The larvae can be up to 70 mm long and are found in lowland forests on deadwood. They are edible and said to taste like buttery chicken.

Rhinoceros Beetle

Are huge. Their grubs are not popular cuisine yet, but many researchers believe the protein in a single grub makes it a worthwhile food resource.

Edible Stinkbugs

These stinkbugs are consumed in Zimbabwe and by the Venda people of South Africa. The chemicals stored in the stink glands are unpalatable and so the stinkbugs must be kept carefully alive when collected. The live bugs are placed in buckets of warm water and agitated to release all their stink. Once the stink glands are empty they can be boiled normally. Those that did not release their stink are blackened after cooking and can be thrown out. The rest are dried and eaten, or roasted with a little salt, or cooked in porridge. Stinkbug species are also eaten in Thailand, Laos, and Northeast India

Jumiles

These are small stinkbugs native to the Taxco region in the state of Guerrero in Mexico. They are collected for making sauce and to use as taco filling. They are sometimes eaten alive. In Taxco, the natives have a large festival on November 1, which is the start of the jumil-collecting season. There is even a Jumil Queen-crowning. Chumiles are smaller stinkbugs found in the same region and also eaten. Said to taste like fruit gum.

Locusts

Locusts are considered edible by several peoples, such as the Chinese. Some locusts are Kosher; specifically, four species of locust were permissible by kosher law: the yellow locust, red locust, spotted gray locust, and white locust. Being impossible to clearly distinguish kosher locusts from nonkosher locusts, most rabbis decided all locusts were forbidden in the 19th century or so. This means they were probably eaten regularly before then, usually by the poor. The Midrash suggests they were placed in barrels and pickled.

Mole Cricket

In East Asia the mole cricket is sometimes fried as food.

Nsenene

The long-horned grasshopper is a Ugandan delicacy as well as a source of income. Collected by women and children in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, they are given to the women’s husbands in return for new dresses. The women were once forbidden from eating them, believed to cause deformities in children. Now this rule is relaxed.

Dragonfly

Eaten in several locales throughout the world, such as Indonesia where they are caught by a sticky stick and then fried as a delicacy.

Mealworms

Mealworms are the larvae of darkling beetles, found worldwide. Mealworms are easily raised, which makes them a good food source for creatures and man alike. They are sometimes made into novelty tequila candies in Mexico, although they are not used to flavor tequila or mescal.

Termites

The winged ones, called alates, are nutritious and actually tasty with a nutty flavoring. Easily gathered at the beginning of the rainy season in West, Central, and Southern Africa, the wings are winnowed off and the bodies are roasted on a hot plate or lightly fried until crisp. They are also eaten in Indonesia, including Central Java, roasted or fried.

Bush coconut

This is actually a gall (made by an insect growing inside) on the bloodwood tree and is picked by Central Australian Aborigines and cracked open to eat the larvae inside.

Mulga Apple

Similar to the bush coconut, it is the insect gall from an acacia tree of Central Australia, and it is eaten raw or cooked in hot earth.

Cheese Fly

Casu Marzu, or formaggio marcio, is a Sardinian tradition. Essentially it is sheep milk cheese brought beyond fermentation to the point where it is completely riddled with cheese fly maggots. These translucent white worms, about 8 mm in length, are said to launch themselves distances of up to 15 mm when disturbed. Some people clear the larvae from the decomposed cheese before eating. Some don’t. Most Sardinian aficionados believe that dead maggots means the cheese is unsafe and will only eat cheese with live ones. Currently, EU health regulations prohibit the sale of casu marzu, but it can be had on the black market for double the price. Others say it is a traditional food (made for thousands of years) and therefore exempt. There are other cheeses throughout Europe made similarly.

Milbenkäse

A German specialty cheese that has been made since the Middle Ages. It is a cheese that is placed in a wooden box and allowed to become infested with cheese mites for at least three months. Rye flour is also placed in the box; otherwise, the cheese mites would eat the cheese rather than nibble away at the crust. The digestive juices of the mites diffuse into the cheese and ferment it, turning it reddish-brown after three months, black after a year. The taste is similar to Harzer cheese but with a bitter note and a zesty aftertaste. Mites still clinging onto the rind are also consumed.

Mimolette

Cheese traditionally produced around Lille, France, as well as some areas of Belgium and the Netherlands. It was originally made at the request of Louis XIV. The greyish crust is the result of cheese mites intentionally introduced to add flavor by their action on the surface of the cheese. It is said when it is “extra-old” it is hard to chew but has a hazelnut flavor.

Mescal Worm

It should be noted that the worm gimmick in certain types of mescal began in the 1940s or so. The most traditional way to drink mescal is with a side plate of fried larvae ground with chili peppers and salt and cut limes. You take a pinch of the larvae mixture and place it on the tongue, then immediately begin to drink the shot, but slowly. It’s popular for breakfast.

Chahuis

Or xamoes, this is a beetle found in Mexico that feeds on the mesquite tree. They are toasted and sold in the marketplaces throughout Mexico. It must be well-cooked or has a bitter flavor.

Chilocuil

Also chinicuil or tecol, these moth caterpillars are native to North America and are a traditional food in Mexican cuisine. They feed on the maguey plant and are the preferred “worm” in bottles of mescal (the other worm is the agave snout weevil larvae).

Chapulín

Grasshoppers, plural is chapulines, commonly eaten in parts of Mexico. They are collected while still young in early May through late summer and cleaned, washed, and toasted on a special clay cooking surface with sour-spicy-salty flavorings or toasted with chili. Most often served in Oaxaca as snacks at local sports events. It is thought this is an ancient recipe. Grasshoppers may contain nematodes, so must be well cooked before consumption. Chapulines also have a higher risk for lead contamination.

Kidu

A wood-eating larvae found on sugar palm trees in northern Sumatra of Indonesia, eaten either raw or deep-fried, and sometimes served in a fish sauce.

Medicine

Lots of animals have been used in medicine, especially in traditional Chinese Medicine. Some are insects, including Chinese beetles (Ban mao), centipede (wu gong), hornet’s nest (lu feng fang), leeches (shui zhi), and scorpion (quan zie). All are considered toxic. Dragonflies are used as medicine in Japan and China.

The Spanish fly is a type of green blister beetle that was once used by apothecaries for various reasons. Other species of blister beetle were also (incorrectly) called Spanish flies. The blister beetle contains up to 5% cantharidin, which irritates animal tissues. Crush Spanish fly powder has a disagreeable scent and a bitter flavor. After ingestion and urination, the urethral passages are irritated causing inflammation and swelling in the genitals. It is, however, toxic, causing painful urination, fever, bloody discharge, and sometimes permanent damage to the kidneys and genitals. It has been used as a blister-raising medicine since ancient Roman times. The Chinese mixed the beetles with other poisons and toxins to make stink bombs. Livia, wife of Augustus Caesar, would slip it into her guests food, hoping that some indiscretions would occur that she could use as blackmail. It was also used in magic, as an abortifacient, and a poison. It was believed to be mixed with arsenic as the favored poison of the Medicis.

Cockroaches were once used as medicine, touted by Dioscorides, Abu Hanifa ad-Dainuri, and Kamal al-Din al-Damiri, and have been recommended to feed the starving masses in the future due to its nutritional value.

Fly maggots have been used since antiquity as a wound treatment. It was noted repeatedly in written records that doctors on the battlefield so a high success rate and less morbidity in wounds that had become infested with maggots, and these doctors were the first to trying purposely applying them to save lives. Fly maggots are also used as bait and in food production. In recent studies, maggots are more effective at debridement, but equally as effective in treatment compared to hydrogel.

Game Design: Next time one of the characters is wounded and wakes up being cared for, give him maggot therapy. He’ll be thrilled. Or the PCs investigate a case where a young princess was slipped cantharides and is now fleeing her enraged father, not understanding she was coerced.

Other Insects and Their Uses

Rhinoceros Beetles are popular as pets in parts of Asia, including Japan, and are used in gambling fights in areas like Thailand.

Stick insects are also easily cared for as pets.

Preying mantises are used as biologically control against other creatures that eat crops.

Cool GM Notes

There are these flying insects called embiids that make tunnels and chambers of silk called “galleys” where they live, eat, and breed. These galleys are expanded on as they include new food sources; males only leave in search of a mate and females to look around the immediate area for new food sources. The embiids continue the galleys to make a complex. Each complex consists of a number of individuals, usually all descended from the same female. Some join to form colonies that can be quite complex mazelike structure.

Termites are currently being researched as a potential source of energy and a replacement for fossil fuels. Termites can produce up to two liters of hydrogen from digesting a single sheet of paper, making them one of the most efficient bioreactors. Although currently this concept is unlikely due to inefficient energy inputs, a fuel cell for space travel produced by termites or other creatures would be interesting.

Male scorpionflies have enlarged genitalia that look exactly like scorpion stingers, which is a terrifying concept, if you ask me.