I was a rural Midwestern child of the 1980s, and a common memory from summer nights was collecting fireflies for cash. Parents all over our small farming community would supply us with mason jars and encourage us to fill them as full as we could, with the promise of a penny per lightning bug. Today, with fireflies vanishing from many habitats, I’m slightly mortified that myself, my friends, and my siblings were complicit in an annual insecticide event.
As a child, I never questioned where the tradition came from. Now, writing as a cultural entomologist, I can’t help but wonder where this bizarre ritual began. In the 1940s, researchers started programs to pay children to collect fireflies for medical research and products. One of the earliest programs was out of Johns Hopkins University, where Dr. William D. McElroy was researching firefly chemicals and whether they were related to human chemicals that assist with muscular movement.1“Hot Ziggety! It’s Cash for Fireflies,” Pasadena Star-News (Pasadena, CA), July 20, 1948, 5. This very regional, very specific ask of a few children near Baltimore soon exploded across the Midwest.
Starting in 1959 and continuing through the 1960s and 1990s, Sigma Chemical Company built a program that recruited children (and plenty of adults) to catch fireflies for cash, prizes, and the promise of helping science.
In May 1959, an Associated Press brief announced that Sigma Chemical Company “has started to offer cash payments for live fireflies during the current lightning bug season.” The insects, company officials say, will be used for “scientific and medical research,” with particular emphasis on cancer studies. The rules are straightforward: deliver them alive and in good condition to designated receiving stations. Children and youth groups were encouraged to participate.2“Chemical Company Buys Fireflies,” The Record (Stockton, CA), May 23, 1959, p. 2.
The Sigma Chemical Company, which is now a merged subsidiary of Merck, was based in St. Louis, Mo. The company immediately established a division, the Sigma Firefly Scientists Club, which partnered with scout troops, 4-H clubs, and church youth groups across Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, and Indiana.
By 1960, the program had a name and a full-scale recruitment campaign. A St. Louis newspaper ran a bold advertisement aimed directly at children: “KIDS! JOIN SIGMA FIREFLY SCIENTISTS CLUB. CATCH LIGHTNING BUGS! Earn cash, win a bicycle and other awards.” The Sigma Firefly Scientists Clubs worked with local institutions to serve as drop-off points for the collected insects, which were then transported to St. Louis.3“Kids! Join Sigma Firefly Scientists Club,” advertisement, St. Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis, MO), June 3, 1960, p. 13B.
In June 1961, for example, the Alton Evening Telegraph reported that Sigma operated a receiving station at the Camp Home in East Alton, accepting live fireflies caught by children and paying cash for each insect delivered. The collections were forwarded to Sigma’s laboratories for use in medical research.4“Camp Home to Be Receiving Station for Fireflies,” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), June 23, 1961, p. 7.
The fireflies were one of the only practical sources of the biochemicals luciferin and luciferase, which scientists used in medical and laboratory research. These chemicals produce the firefly’s light and were valuable for detecting cellular activity, studying disease processes, measuring bacterial contamination, and conducting experimental work related to cancer and other conditions. Fireflies could not be easily bred in captivity, and chemical synthesis was limited at the time, so large numbers had to be gathered from the wild each summer.
By the 1970s, firefly collecting really ramped up as the collection hubs expanded beyond the upper Mississippi Valley. A Sigma spokesperson said that they had expanded to 25 states by 1987.5Therese Sedlak, “Firefly Business Is Booming,” The Signal (Santa Clarita, CA), August 23, 1987, p. 24.
Some kids made a great deal of money collecting. For instance, an Ohio Girl Scout troop collected enough fireflies in the summer of 1975 to send seven of the scouts and two chaperones on a European trip.6“Fireflies Help To Fund European Trip,” Gazette Telegraph (Colorado Springs, CO), AP wire, October 5, 1975, p. 12-C.
That same year, Brian Farr collected nearly 100,000 fireflies near his home in Vinton, Iowa, netting him close to $5,000, an incredible sum for a 15-year-old.7“Just As in Days Gone Past, Kids Still Chase ‘Light-bugs,’” Playground Daily News (Playground, FL), July 29, 1976, p. 46.
Also, in Vinton, Judy Woods set up what amounted to a firefly warehousing scheme. Neighbors would drop their catch off with her for cash, which she then sold to Sigma for her own cash. She’d transit 35,000 live fireflies to Sigma in St Louis every other day during the summer season. “Some people with hardly any income catch as a part-time job,” she told United Press International in 1987. “Wealthy people catch as a hobby and for exercise, and middle class families may catch to earn money for vacation or to buy school clothes.”
Examples of swag for the Sigma Firefly Scientist Club via e-bay.
In addition to cash payments, Sigma also conducted contests that gave teams of firefly-collecting kids bonuses for being the top catchers in their communities. And, cash was not the only benefit of the Sigma Firefly Scientists Club. Bicycles were a popular prize for the top catchers. Kids also could choose from a vast array of Sigma Firefly Scientists Club swag, including buttons, pencils, bug nets, and collection buckets.
Sigma was making a killing from this child labor. A 1990 article by the Daily American Republic8John Holloway, “Fireflies Light Up the Summer Skies,” Daily American Republic (Poplar Bluff, MO), July 8, 1990, p. 25. out of Poplar Bluff, Missouri, notes that one milligram of purified luciferin/luciferase sold for $44.75, and that approximately 100 fireflies were required to produce one milligram of usable chemical. The Sigma Chemical Company was paying a penny a firefly in 1990, meaning it was marking them up by about 4,300 percent. Of course, Sigma had to purify, process, package, and distribute these chemicals, but that level of markup is impressive, especially considering they used child labor to achieve it.
By the late 1990s, firefly collecting largely stopped, and the firefly clubs wound down. Advances in biotechnology eliminated the need to kill fireflies for their chemicals. In the mid-1980s, scientists successfully cloned the gene for firefly luciferase, allowing the enzyme to be produced recombinantly in bacteria rather than extracted from the fireflies’ abdomens.9Sm Faysal Bellah, Divine Mensah Sedzro, Hameed Akbar, and S. M. Saker Billah, “Structure, Enzymatic Mechanism of Action, Applications, Advantages, Disadvantages and Modifications of Luciferase Enzyme,” Journal of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Research, published January 14, 2019. Around the same time, improved chemical synthesis methods made laboratory production of luciferin more practical and affordable.
The last announcement in regional newspapers for the club was in Missouri in 2000. Sigma’s marketing frequently stated that the company needed 3 to 5 million fireflies per year, and for several years, it told the press it had collected 2-3 million fireflies. A conservative estimate would say at least 100 million fireflies were killed through the Sigma Firefly Scientists Club.
