Beneficial Insects

Beneficial Insects: Attract the Good, the Voracious, and the Ugly to Your Garden

May 22, 2017

Early on, I learned that nature has many solutions to insect problems. My father, an entomologist, and grandfather, a horticulturalist, used chemicals only when all else failed—a philosophy that flew in the face of America’s love affair with pesticides in the 1960s. Today we call this approach to gardening Integrated Pest Management (IPM).

Integrated Pest Management
According to Craig Mauney, Extension Specialist, IPM involves looking for long term solutions, not short-term fixes. “This requires us to be highly engaged gardeners,” Mauney says. “By that I mean we prevent problems by properly planting the right plants. We look for evidence of insect damage as plants grow and observe patterns of plant decline. When there are problems, we use mechanical, cultural, and biological tools first. Chemicals are a last resort.”

Biological Management
North Carolina State University’s (NCSU) Extension Gardener Handbook defines biological management as “the process of reducing a pest population by using predators, parasitoids (often called parasites), or disease organisms that ordinarily occur in nature.” Why? Because in the great web of life, plant-feeding insects are food for other insects.

Matching Predator and Pest
Sounds good, but how does the home gardener know which beneficial insects to encourage? Good places to start are the Buncombe County Extension Master Gardener^SM Volunteers Helpline (828-255-5522) and NCSU’s Cooperative Extension website. Common beneficial predators in western North Carolina gardens include: ground beetles, ladybird beetles, lacewings, wheel bugs, hoverflies, and predatory mites. These active insects have long life-cycles and prey on smaller, weaker insects, usually devouring them in one gulp.

Ladybug_Hippodamia-tredecimpunctata_Gilles-San-Martin_CC-BY-SA-2.0_Flickr — Ladybird or ladybug beetle devours aphids

Ladybird or Ladybug Beetle
According to the University of Florida’s Entomology Department, the name of these familiar red and black insects “has been used in England for more than 600 years…The lady for whom they were named was the Virgin Mary, and common names in other European languages have the same association (the German name Marienkafer translates to Marybeetle or ladybeetle).” How can the ladybird better help your garden? Some of the pests they help control include aphids, scales, whiteflies, and mites.

Lacewing_Nell Kelley_CC BY-NC 2.0_Flickr — Green lacewing

Lacewings
Lacewings are distinguished by roof-like, transparent wings that are held over the insect’s body. Known as “aphid lions,” the larvae of the lacewing emerge hungry and voraciously feed on aphids and other soft-bodied insects, such as mealybugs, scales, thrips, whiteflies, spider mites, leafhopper nymphs, and caterpillar eggs. According to Michigan State University, “natural control of aphids is possible when there is one (lacewing) larva per 70 aphids.” Not bad for an insect that grows to just a half-inch long! These beneficial insects are particularly sensitive to pesticides, however!

Wheel Bugs or Assassin Bugs
We know them as those sinister-looking, long-snouted, brown insects that appear in great numbers each spring, often in places where we don’t want them, like our homes and cars. One place we do want them is in the garden. These predators prefer dining on soft-bodied insects such as caterpillars, moths, aphids, and small beetles. Wheel bugs are not aggressive, but they can give you a painful bite if handled improperly. If you have to pick one up, use a paper towel to gently remove it to the great outdoors where it can protect your garden.

Wheel Bug Nymph_John Flannery_CC BY-SA 2.0_Flickr — Wheel bug nymph

Wheel Bug_John Flannery_CC BY-SA 2.0_Flickr — Wheel bug adult

Syrphid fly_Debbie Ross_NCState_AgExtAgent — Syrphid fly or hover fly

Hoverflies or Syrphid flies
They look like wasps but they’re really flies. The name—hover fly—comes from the way they hang in the air during flight. In their adult form, they are pollinators. In their larval form, they are predators. The larvae are often found among aphid colonies, one of their favorite foods. These doubly beneficial insects are sensitive to several broad-spectrum pesticides, especially organophosphates (OP) such as parathion and malathion.

Promoting Beneficial Insects
Want to attract beneficial insects? An important key is to plant so that there are blooms year-round in the garden. Opt for native plants that flower and include both flowering annuals and perennials to feed beneficial insects.

Article written by Janet Moore, Extension Master Gardener^SM Volunteer.

We are ALL keepers of the bees.

March 28, 2016

The first settlers who brought honey bee hives in woven skeps to the colonies from Europe in the early 1600s could never have imagined today’s commercial beekeeping industry. Now more than a million hives crisscross the country on flatbed semis, providing essential pollination services so that the resulting produce (not unlike the bees) can be shipped to consumers from coast to coast.

Today, honey bees are considered “livestock”, and most are managed intensively by commercial, migratory beekeepers who work to keep up with the demand of equally intensive, industrial agriculture. The world’s largest pollination event is in California each February to March where more than 1,600,000 hives pollinate the state’s 800,000 + acres of almonds.

Nor would the settlers have predicted that bees, both managed honeybees and the 4000 species of native bees, would be unable to find enough food in a vast country filled with such rich and abundant flora.

While we cannot turn back the clock, we can help by taking important action. To repeat Dr. Marla Spivak’s urgent plea, grow more flowers, including vines, ground covers, perennials, annuals, shrubs and trees. Plant mostly natives since they thrive where they evolved, and support the pollinators with whom they co-evolved. Cultivate without pesticides.

I recommend you plant flowers everywhere you can imagine – containers on apartment decks, in landscapes where you work, live, worship, play, go to school, and shop. Plant flowers along roadsides and in empty lots.

If you cannot or do not want to plant flowers, here are some other things you can do:
• Understand where and how your food is produced. From the seeds that are planted in California’s Central Valley or in Peru or China to the produce at your grocery store, learn what happens along the way. Consider purchasing locally produced food that is grown with more sustainable practices. Better yet, grow at least some of your own food. Join or start a community garden.
• Support you local beekeeper and buy real, natural, local honey. Like vintage wine, local honey is a unique reflection of a specific place in time. Each of my honey harvests is a taste ‘picture’ of the flowers that bloomed during that season within just a mile or two of our farm. I even label it: “A Taste of Summer 2015”, or “Appalachian Spring 2014”. The French use a hard-to-translate word to describe this utterly unique characteristic, “terroir”.
• Reduce the size of your lawn. This bears repeating from an earlier post. Author of the groundbreaking, prophetic book, “Bringing Nature Home”, Doug Tallamy urges all of us, along with the landscaping industry, to upend the standard use of the lawn as the default element, with plants added to it. Instead, put a variety of elements into the yard (places to retreat, to sun, to have shade, to play, to picnic, to grow food and cut flowers) and let the lawn be the green carpeted walkway that leads us to these destinations and defines borders.

• Reduce or eliminate use of toxins, not just pesticides in the garden and landscape, but all toxins. Our soils and waters, and even our bodies and the bodies of many animals are becoming contaminated with poisons in so many of our household products. Two chemicals in the news and generating much controversy: glyphosate (active ingredient in Roundup) and the family of neonicitinoids. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to start testing certain foods for residues of glyphosate, the world’s most widely used weed killer (1.4 billion pounds/year) after the World Health Organization’s cancer experts in 2015 declared the chemical a probable human carcinogen. Neconicitinoids, often called “neonics” are systemics. The toxins are taken up by a plant through water in the soil and circulated through the vascular system, showing up not only on the foliage (the leaves those young monarch caterpillars eat) but also in pollen and nectar. Neonics, including imidicloprid, are active ingredients in many of the lawn and garden chemicals most home owners purchase, and are used by most large producers of bedding plants sold by many nurseries and garden centers. A recent, even-handed summary of scientific studies, published by The Xerces Society, looked at the impact of neonics on beneficial insects, especially bees. The full 44-page report as well as a 2-page summary are available for free at:
http://www.xerces.org/neonicotinoids-and-bees/
• Educate yourself and others. Ask questions, share the answers and encourage folks to continue learning and understanding the complex issues around pollination. Did you know that a swarm of honey bees is nothing to fear?

Relax: Swarming is how honey bee colonies reproduce. No swarming would mean no honey bees. Swarms of honey bees rarely sting since they have no home to protect, and because they are engorged with honey (they packed before they left their old home). Many swarms do not survive in the wild and beekeepers are eager to rescue them. Call your County Extension offices which generally have lists of area beekeepers wanting swarms. — Relax: Swarming is how honey bee colonies reproduce. No swarming would mean no honey bees. Swarms of honey bees rarely sting since they have no home to protect, and because they are engorged with honey (they packed before they left their old home). Many swarms do not survive in the wild and beekeepers are eager to rescue them.

In fact, this crowd of bees is an old queen with half her original colony in search of a new home. She left soon-to-be-born daughter queens and the other half of the colony’s population back in the original home. One colony becoming two. Swarming is how honey bees procreate, and is the goal of every healthy colony – to get big and strong enough in mid to late spring to be able to split into two colonies. Often the cast swarm doesn’t make it through the first winter. If you see a swarm, call the Extension office. They will give you a beekeeper contact who will come to the rescue. Beekeepers love swarms.
• Look for more ways to connect, or re-connect, to the natural world. We, all of us – plants, animals and those animals we call “people” – are in this together.

Written by Diane Almond, Extension Master Gardener Volunteer

The bees are dying, the bees are dying…Really?

March 8, 2016

The media’s continuing coverage of bees and their challenges, especially pesticides, tends to incite, frighten and confuse most of us. Even among scientists the issues are complex and controversial, but everyone agrees that bees desperately need more and better food. The best way for all of us to help is to grow more flowering plants. Dr. Marla Spivak’s plea is more specific and compelling: “Plant flowers, mostly native and keep them free of pesticides.” For a clear, concise explanation about what is going on with bees, you can’t beat her TED talk, http://www.ted.com/talks/marla_spivak_why_bees_are_disappearing?language=en

The oft-quoted ‘Bees are responsible for every third bite of our food’ is really an underestimation. The majority of our most nutritious and delicious foods rely on insect, largely bee, pollination. This includes foods such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, berries, oils, and indirectly some of our dairy and meat products, since alfalfa used for hay and silage requires bee pollination. Today’s industrial agricultural system comprises huge fields of single crops (monoculture) and relies heavily on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Because these fields do not sustain populations of native pollinators, since flowers are only in bloom for a brief time, managed honey bee hives are brought in. In February, when the 800,000 acres of almond trees are in bloom in California, it can be a pollinator paradise. After the blooms are gone in a few weeks, the almond orchards are a toxic food desert and will be so for most of the year. The bloom period is preceded and followed by a regimen of pesticide applications, most harmful to bees. A majority of this country’s 2.5 million honey bee hives, up to 1,600,000 hives, are transported to the orchards on pallets. Most of those bee hives are then trucked off to other crops across the country.

Moving Honey Bee Hives from South Carolina to Maine for Blueberry Pollination

It’s a paradox. Bees working hard to help produce our food are in need of more and better food of their own. Hmmm.

Besides the mandate to plant flowers, mostly natives, free of pesticides, gardeners might consider using edible plants throughout the landscape for both their inherent beauty and their teaching value. Watch the bumble bees buzz-pollinate your tomato and pepper plants grown in attractive containers with artistic stakes. Catch the huge carpenter bees cheating at blueberry pollination. Instead of diving straight into the flowers, they drill holes through the petals, bypassing the pollen and going straight to the nectar.

Carpenter bees 'cheat' by cutting slits in the petals to reach the nectar without passing the pollen. Often other potential pollinators such as this honey bee nectar forager will use the slits and also bypass the pollen. — Carpenter bees ‘cheat’ by cutting slits in the petals to reach the nectar without passing the pollen. Often other potential pollinators such as this honey bee nectar forager will use the slits and also bypass the pollen.

Blueberry bushes are beautiful most of the year, having spring flowers followed by delicious fruit and then gorgeous fall foliage colors of oranges and reds that often last until winter. Let a squash or pumpkin vine wander through a flower bed, or stake a cucumber vine on a privacy fence. Five pollinator visits per flower to make a single fruit means lots of buzzing activity and gives kids of all ages a chance to learn about male and female flowers. Then observe the tiny ovary grow to full fruit size. Watch the ‘bee party’ in a patch of sunflowers at the back of your cutting garden or along a sunny fence line, and remember; no bees, no sunflower seeds or sunflower oil. While not a pollinator favorite, a border of Rainbow Chard with its crinkly large leaves of glossy red, pink, orange, yellow and green are stunning, and if you don’t mind the resulting holes, you might love seeing the goldfinches dining on them. The options are nearly endless for edible landscapes that are beautiful, educational and also provide food for you, the precious pollinators and the other wildlife in your neighborhood.

Written by Extension Master Gardener Volunteer Diane Almond.

Beneficial Insects