The green lacewing larvae are often called ‘aphid lions’. These extremely carnivorous larvae will eat aphids, thrips, mealybugs, caterpillars, immature white flies and pest insect eggs.Green Lacewing: If you want to place natural pest control in your garden, green house, field, or irrigated crops, the lacewings will help eliminate what are known as bad insects. Lacewings are categorized as beneficial insects that greatly aid in pest control. They are commonly found in North America and proliferate in the parts that have high humidity like forest edges. They can also live in fields, gardens,greenhouses and you can buy Lacewing Larvae Lacewings camouflage themselves, hiding behind plant leaves and stems, to blend in with the green foliage. What They Eat When it comes to pest control, it is the larvae that will do the work for you. The larvae predates on many of the soft-bodied insects and mites. They are often called ‘aphid lions’. These extremely carnivorous larvae will eat aphids, thrips, mealybugs, caterpillars, immature white flies and pest insect eggs. 
The adult green lacewing of some species will prey on aphids on a limited extent, preferring to feed on pollen, nectar and what is known as ‘honeydew’. What Is Honeydew Aphids, scale insects and other sucking insects excrete a kind of liquid that is called honeydew. The reason why this liquid is named honeydew is because it is sought after to be consumed by some insects like the beneficial one discussed here. In places that the bad insects like aphids thrive, there will be more excretion of honeydew, and this in turn will attract more Lacewings. With the adult green lacewing consuming the honeydew, and their larvae devouring the bad insects like aphids, the cycle of predator and prey is established, creating the highly effective natural pest control needed. How Do the Larvae Eat Pests? The mandible of the larvae is sickle-shaped. Inside their jaws are tubes that work two ways. When they get to bite the bad insect, powerful venom comes out the tubes to paralyze the prey. Once the prey is immobilized by the venom, the larvae will use the tubes to suck out the body fluids of their prey. The larvae process of consuming their prey by rendering them motionless and sucking out their life essence efficiently kills numerous unwanted garden insects. How Many Aphids Can green lacewing Eat? The life cycle of this beneficial insect is about 6 weeks. Their larvae stage lasts from 2 to 4 weeks. An estimated 200 hundred aphids can be eaten in a week by one larva. The average amount of aphids and other pests that a Lacewing will consume throughout its life cycle is 600. How Do I Use insects for Pest Control? If there are not enough of them around your yard to make a significant dent to the bad insect population in your garden, you can buy larvae from insect companies. They are usually sold by the thousand, and 1000 Lacewing Larvae eat 10M Aphids per Day To ensure that they will survive and even lay eggs, as one female can lay up to 200 eggs, there has to be enough food to sustain them. When most of the pests have been eradicated, there may be some difficulty for the Lacewing to find food. Their food requirement can be supplemented by buying commercially made ‘honeydew’. This can be fed to them before night, as this is the time when the bug is most active. You can start deploying these voracious bad insect eaters early in the season. This is ideal as their natural life cycle can be used to the fullest. To ensure continuous pest control, it deployment of larvae can be done up to 4 times in one season. Adding the insects can be done every 4 weeks, to make sure that not a day will pass that your plants are unprotected due to lack of larvae. The Purchased Insects When the shipment of the beneficial insects arrives, keep them out of direct sunlight. There has to be enough room in the container for them to feed, as they might just eat each other. Using the larvae will eliminate the need of using organic or harmful pesticides. It will also be able to save your time and effort, as there will no longer be a need to manually spray your plants with pest control. There are fifteen species of green lacewings. It is quite difficult to tell them apart unless you get to closely observe then. The two most common species are Common Lacewing, Chrysoperla rufilabris and the Eastern Green Lacewing, Chrysopa ornata. The species of green lacewing, Chrysoperla carnea lives on the ground, while the Chrysoperla rufilabris lives in trees. The adult Green Lacewing grows from ½ to ¾ inches long. They are either pale green or yellow, with golden copper eyes and long, thin antennae. They have long, transparent wings with green veins, hence the name. The larvae has smaller bodies that can be plain green, yellow, or brown with some species variations that can occur as a long stripe or spots appearing throughout the body. The most prominent feature of the larvae is the mouth, wherein the mandibles are pincher like. The jaws of the larvae have been called similar to that of tiny alligators. The beneficial insect will seek out the bad insects wherever they may be hiding, be it in the plant, on the ground, as eggs, immature or adult. It is similar to sending out a small army to your garden with the mission to kill the enemy, as lacewings are nature’s best aphid predator. The role of this useful insect in pest control is that created by the circle of life. _________________________________________________________________ Top of Green Lacewing Listed under Natural Pest Control More natural ways to eliminate bugs from your garden Praying Mantis typical diet consists of grasshoppers, flies, moths and crickets. They also eat just about any other type of insect that may come along. Ladybugs are in fact a Ladybird Beetle and has a wonderful appetite for such things as mites, aphids, whiteflies, chinch bugs and many other soft-bodied insects but it doesn’t stop there. |
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