What are Beneficial Insects?
Often too much attention is paid to harmful insects in the garden, with the result that people use more insecticides that are really called for. We here on the North Coast are fortunate in having fewer insect pests that harm roses than in many areas of the country. Our most common insect pests are probably aphids, thrips and leaf hoppers. If you are not killing them with insecticides, there are a lot of friendly, helpful beneficial insects which just love to dine on your pests. These include lady bugs, dragon flies, lace wings, a large number of different ground beetles, and some good spiders.
Beneficial insects are naturally occurring insect predators. In nature there are the plant eating organisms and predators that eat these plant eaters. We have all seen this in the mammal world, however normally we do not think of the insect world. The same food chain is found in the insect world. Beneficial insects are very small and do not bother humans, pets, or livestock. They target only their prey insects and do not harm any other insect, plant, or animal.
Beneficial insects are insects that prey on other insects that eat the plants in our gardens and farms. Some examples of beneficial insects include ladybugs, spiders and predatory wasps. In our project, we will be focusing mostly on predatory wasps. An increased number and diversity of beneficial insects may help us to reduce the amount of potentially toxic pesticides we need to prevent pest invasion. By reducing the amount of pesticides we use on our crops, we help protect the environment and our health. Now Let’s Look At Predatory Wasps. Predatory wasps lay their eggs in the bodies of plant-feeding pest insects such as caterpillars and aphids, thereby reducing the populations of these pest species. We hypothesize that as the variety of plants present in the garden increase, the diversity of predatory wasps and other beneficial insects will also increase. This means that if you plant many different types of plants in your garden, insect pests may cause less overall damage to the plant
