Spring is now in full swing and with the beautiful flowers starting to bloom, your garden will also be buzzing with insects. Not all insects are harmful for your garden plants, some actually help eradicate the harmful insects. These beneficial insects can act as a form of natural garden control or help to pollinate your fruit trees.
Ladybugs
Ladybugs start off their lifecycle as larvae, which feast on aphids that eat your plants! They can devour up to 40 aphids per hour.
Praying Mantises
Praying mantises can clean your garden of bad insects, but they can also devour good ones too. The bad guys these critters target include leafhoppers, aphids, flies, crickets, grasshoppers, spiders, small tree frogs, lizards, and mice.
Spiders
Spiders are oftentimes the most important biological control of pests in and around homes, yards, gardens and crops. Spiders use various tactics to capture prey. Web building spiders use their webbing to ensnare; other species are hunters that actively search for their food. Consequently, destruction of most spiders should be avoided because without spiders our world would be over-run by insects. And spiders are a food source for birds and other small mammals, especially during winter and spring.
Ground beetles
“Ground beetles” is the name of a large group of predatory beetles that are beneficial as both adults and larvae. They will eat a wide range of insects, including nematodes, caterpillars, thrips, weevils, slugs, and silverfish.
Bees
Apart from being expert producers of honey, bees also play a key role in pollination of nearly all flowers and fruits – meaning the absence of bees could be the very thing holding your garden back from achieving its most bountiful harvests yet.
If you don’t have the help of any of the above beneficial insects in your garden and you are having issues with pests in and around your home, give Service Master a call to advise and administer the best, and most environmentally friendly pest control solution.
