Dried Fruit Beetle Carpophilus hemipterus

This came to sugar. I took three photos, two of which weren't in focus, and then it flew. Sadly I wasn't able to relocate it, so only had these three poor photos to go on to identify it and no specimen. I saw that the elytra fell well short of the tip of the abdomen and this made me wonder if it was a strange rove beetle, but my attempts to find something that looked like this came to nought, and the beetle seemed destined to never be identified.

In 2026, while identifying a weevil caught on the same day, I came across the photos again, and this time with a few more years' experience I recognised that it was not a rove beetle. It reminded me of Nitidulidae and a bit of research led to Carophilus, and unless I'm overlooking something, the only contender with this distinctive elytral pattern is hemipterus.

Dried Fruit Beetle Carpophilus hemipterus, North Elmham (Norfolk, UK), 17th July 2020