| Home |
 Blog-Newsletter |
| Tips |
| DVD's |
| Introduction |
| New Pictures |
| Videos |
| My Garden |
| Programs (pdf) |
| Free |
| Schools |
| Butterfly Books |
| Search |
| St. Louis Butterfly Sites |
| Feedback |
| Contact |
9016 Robyn Rd
St Louis MO 63126
Phone: 314-849-6114
Copyright © 2006
The Tom Terrific Company LLC
Predatory Insects
A recent article about gardening recommended buying predatory insects as a way of controlling pests. Immediately, alarms started clanging in my head. What is a pest to one person is a beautiful butterfly to another person. The article encouraged people to buy predators such as Trichogramma Wasps, Green Lacewings and Praying Mantis.
The BIG problem with this strategy is that the predators will just as easily dine on butterfly eggs, caterpillars, chrysalises and adult butterflies as they will on other insects.
At our local botanical garden, a “Master Gardener” set up a program to raise Monarch
butterflies in an enclosed area. Around July, the Garden decided to introduce “beneficial”
insects as a way of controlling bugs and pests. The “beneficial” insects turned out to
be the scourge of the Monarchs. All of the Monarch caterpillars died, even though they were behind
a screened-in area. Some of the predators are so small they can even pass through a standard window
screen. On the Internet they offer Trichogramma Wasps for
sale. According to the site a Trichogramma Wasp wingspan is 1/50 of an inch. I measured my window
screen. It measured 1/18 of an inch. That means two Trichogramma wasps could walk right through
the screen holes without even touching each other. These are very tiny insects and even hard to
see. The lesson learned is that small predators are very hard to stop.
Tachinid flies are also predatory insects. They look like the common housefly, but are looking for caterpillars to act as hosts for their eggs. One of the websites used this quote, “Don't kill aterpillars with white eggs stuck to their backs as the eggs will become the next generation of Tachinid flies.” My response would be, “Destroy that caterpillar!” We don’t want more predators eating our caterpillars. According to Encyclopedia.com there are 1,300 species of Tachinid flies. Please don’t increase the population of these predators.
It’s a wonder any butterflies make it into adulthood. To keep the population increasing, keep your credit cards in your wallet and just let nature take its course. Predators are necessary to keep the natural order, but we don’t need to tip the balance in their favor.
Programs(pdf)
