The locust are one of the few insects mentioned as a clean or allowed source of food. Locusts were fried in flour or honey, or were preserved by being dried. Locusts and wild honey a basic diet in the wilderness for John the Baptist. Locust are a used as an illustration of the judgment of the LORD God against a rebellious nation. Locusts are ravenous at all three stages of their development-a larval stage in which wingless locusts hop like fleas, a pupal stage in which the wings are encased in a sack and the locusts walk like ordinary insects, and the adult stage in which they fly. Adult locusts swarm in the air like clouds and cover the landscape where they alight, leaving it bared.