7 beneficial bugs you don’t want to kill
Beneficial bugs are natural predators to the common nuisance bugs that plague particular plants. Of all insect species, 95 percent that are found in lawn and gardens are beneficial or have no effect on the yard. There are two types of beneficial bugs: predatory insects are ones that hunt and kill their prey and parasitoids live on or within their host until it dies. Here are a few predatory and parasitoid insects:
Lady beetles – feed on aphids. Lady beetles are drawn to chives, cilantro, fennel, marigold, yarrow, and angelica.
Dragonflies – feed on mosquitoes, gnats, mayflies, and many more. Dragonflies need a water source to lay their eggs and they also tend to hunt over water.
Tachinid fly – feed on army worms, stink bugs, mole cricket and beetles. They are attracted to buckwheat, parsley, tansy, and lemon balm.
Green lacewings – the larvae have pincers that inject venom into their victims to paralyze them. They feed on aphids, mealy bugs, cottony cushion scale, spider mites, thrips and caterpillars. They attracted to dill, cosmos, Queen Anne’s lace, and prairie sunflowers.
Parasitic wasp ¬– 16,000 different species of parasitic wasps lay their eggs inside other insects such as aphids, whiteflies, scales and caterpillars. They are attracted to fennel, dill, sweet alyssum, lemon balm and asters.
Big-eyed bug – feed on chinch bugs, caterpillars and other soft-bodied insects. The big-eyed are attract to alfalfa, fennel, spearmint and caraway.
Assassin bug ¬– 100 species of assassin bugs eat bean beetles, leafhoppers, cucumber beetles, aphids and caterpillars. Assassin bugs prefer bushy cover and wildflowers.
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