Insects: The good, the bad, the ugly
With warmer weather arriving, we’re outside more and become aware of what surrounds us.
We realize the birds and squirrels are not the only ones active. All kinds of bugs are really warming up, too.
Early mornings and late evenings bring out the “no-see-ums,” but when they infiltrate the air in droves you really do see-um! We are a universe filled with every kind of insect imaginable.
Insects pollinate many plants and furnish food for useful animals, including birds, fish poultry and livestock. It has been said that a world without insects would be strangely lacking in many ways. In the insect world, we have our friends and our pests.
Some insects perform an important service in killing injurious insects.
The two classes of these types of insects are the predators that seize and devour insects as prey and the parasites that lay eggs in, on, or near the host and when the larvae hatch feed on the insect until it is destroyed. The old clichés “it’s a dog eat dog world” or “survival of the fittest” could be applied.
Some examples of predators include dragonflies, many beetles, large wasps and the praying mantis, so called because it has a habit of lifting its front legs as if it were praying, but actually taking this position only when at rest.
It does not live up to its name, as it is cruel and greedy to the point a female mantis will not hesitate to devour her own mate if she is hungry. But it has its good side also by being valuable to the farmer in eating great quantities of destructive field and garden insects.
The female dragonfly, which mates in-flight, also lays her eggs on the wing, dropping them into the water or inside the stems of water plants. The young dragonfly hatches from the egg in 5 to 15 days, is called a “nymph” and is very ugly. It remains in the water for 1 to 5 years, feeding on water insects and other small water animals.
It will, during its underwater life, shed its skin 12 or more times before it crawls to the top of a reed and becomes a fully-formed dragonfly. The dragonfly, a very helpful insect, has large eyes and six legs covered with spines holding them together, forming a basket it uses to capture insect prey as it flies, mostly small flies and mosquitos, therefore being nicknamed a “skeeter hawk.”
The ladybug, colorful red with black spots, and their larvae do useful work in feeding greedily on aphids and scale insects.
Large wasps sometimes damage fruit, but they also destroy large quantities of caterpillars and other harmful insects. They do far more good than harm.
Small birds, such as starlings, nuthatches and swallows, catch insects on the wing, peck and devour grub worms from the soil and can be a boon if enticed to the garden by birdhouses and water basins. Other helpful animals in the garden, but not welcomed by the squeamish, are toady frogs and garter snakes.
There are many insect pests for the gardener, including cutworms, grubs and aphids that are classified as bad and ugly. The dark brown squash bug, injurious to a plant and difficult to kill, appears in spring and its grayish nymphs are abundant in summer. Soap and nicotine sprays will kill many nymphs.
The squash borer, a white caterpillar, tunnels the stems and kills the vines. The borer may be killed by making a small slit in the stem and crushing it.
Sometimes, one stage of a species of beetle is injurious while another stage is beneficial. Pests of this kind are numerous, many being harmless and colorful. One that is injurious is the June bug, a large leaf eating beetle with larvae white grubs that live in the soil and feed chiefly on roots.
Butterflies and moths in adult stage are helpful and colorful, but in the larvae stage can be harmful by feeding on leaves and other parts of the plant, among them the oriental gypsy moth, fall webworms, tomato worms, cutworms, cabbage worms and corn ear worms, which can devour more than 2,000,000 acres of corn.
Topping the harmful and expensive to control insect list are the boll weevil, mosquito and corn ear worm.
Among the social bees, the honeybee is the most gifted of all insects as the only one that provides any important part of our food. It, along with the bumblebee and the stingless bee, is useful to plants since it carries pollen from one flower to another. Without its help, more than 100,000 kinds of plants would not be able to form seeds and would die out.
Often the insect’s visit is not for the pollen but for nectar, which it uses in the making of honey. In the process it gets pollen dusted, which means it is ready to act as a pollen carrier.
Bees and butterflies are the most common agents of pollination, so in addition to being colorful and beautiful, they are certainly at the top of the list as helpful insects — some of the good guys.
Needless to say, in dealing with the insect world, gardeners and farmers have their hands full.
Jean Tanner is a lifelong resident of rural Bluffton and can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org.