 Welcome to the spring fever garden forums where we connect the gardeners to the experts of North Dakota State University. My name is Tom Cobb. I'm an extension horticulturist in the Department of Plant Sciences, and I'm here with Scott Swanson. He's an electronic media specialist in the Department of Agriculture Communications. This is the third of our four spring fever garden forums. And tonight our theme is healthy environment. Okay, let's learn about beneficial insects. And here to teach us is Dr. Jan Kanotl. Jan is the extension entomologist at North Dakota State University. And for the past 20 years, she has provided statewide leadership in extension entomology and the North Dakota Integrated Pest Management. That's the IPM program. And she coordinates and co-edits the NDSU Crop and Pest Report. Jan's research focuses on insect pests of field crops, as well as gardens, and she also does work on pollinators. Jan, welcome to the forums. Thank you, Tom, very much and good evening. I'd like to get started and acknowledge my co-presenters Patrick Boze and Travis Proshashka. First of all, so we think about insects we think about pests, but in reality, most of the insects are good insects. In fact, 99% of them. And that's what I'll be talking about today, natural free pest control in the garden. Insects have many other benefits, pollination, which we're all familiar with. That's valued at over $40 billion in the U.S. alone. And then many other insects are decomposers. They break down leaves and other botanical nutrients, and also dead bodies. They'll break them down and they all become nutrients in their soil. They're used in medical field as well. For example, we use maggots to put on burns, and it actually helps heal the burns. And the venom in honeybees is used in arthritic medicine. These are also important food sources for our ecosystem birds and other organisms, but in other countries, they also eat insects like Africa and South America. So there's even bugs cookbooks now if you're interested in that. And if you want to go on a high protein low fat diet, try crickets and grasshoppers. And then we talk about all different types of natural enemies predators, which will be some insects and non insects spiders and mites parasitoids and diseases that affect insects. So first I wanted to explain the difference between predators versus parasitoids predators there's very many different species and we'll go through just a small handful of them today. Parasitoids are mainly wasps and flies. Predators are generalists, meaning they'll go after whatever they find, and some of them even feed on pollen, nectar, and vegetation, as well as insect prey. And parasitoids are usually specialists, some of them only attack one insect, but others will go after a whole host of them in a group of insects. Predators are usually big and larger than the prey, whereas parasitoids are small. And predators, they'll be predacious in the adult or the immature stage. Parasitoids it's only the immature stage that will attack and kill its host predators, they can attack. Similarly the adult and immature stages, some of them will feed on eggs but most of them it's the adult or immature like the nymph or caterpillar. Parasitoids they'll attack whatever stage they can find, or the specific to some of them like I mentioned earlier are just egg specifics like a trick or grandma wasps of the European cornbore egg. Let's get started. First we're going to go with the order hemitra. Hemi means half, and that's because it has a half, membranous wing, and the other half is solid, and I have an arrow pointing to the membranous part of the wing. The new pirate bug is very tiny as the name implies, and it's black and white, and it has a solid brown band going across it. The immature stage is called a nymph, and they're much smaller than the adult. So it's even smaller and bright orange with red eyes and they're usually always wingless. The new pirate bugs feed by having piercing sucking mouth parts, so it'll insert its mouth part into its host, and in the picture here you can see it's an immature crawler stage of scale insects. And then it sucks out the juices, and they'll feed on a variety of small insects, mainly mites and aphids, and anything small for this little guy. This is one hemitra order steel ambush and assassin bug. The ambush bug is one of my favorites. They're very cryptic and they blend in. You'll often see them in the flowers, and they have reptorial forelegs that you can see here. And they grab their prey, and then they have the piercing sucking mouth parts as well for feeding. The assassin bug is much larger. They can be up to two inches almost for the wheel bug, which is easy to identify. You can see it kind of looks like the sprockets of a wheel here on the thorax. And look at the size of that beak. So it goes after things that are bigger than it, even grass uppers, large caterpillars, beetles, bees and wasps, flies, anything it can find. And also they can give you a nasty bite if you handle them. The hemitra order again, big eye bugs. This one's pretty easy to identify very small, only about a quarter of an inch, but they got big eyes. You can see and this triangle here is characteristic of the hemitra order as well. So just about all the insects I talked about are all have that characteristic that you will see in the adult stage. Nymphs are smaller again, no wings, but it still has those big eyes. And this guy is going to feed on smaller prey. So bugs. This one is generally less than a half an inch long, and they're brown to black, the color can range depending on species. And again, they have the adult stage that triangle in the middle of the back and the half memberness swings. And they have reptorial for four legs that grab the prey. This little aphid then is being sucked with the piercing mouth part piercing sucking mouth parts. And again, they feed on quite a variety of prey. Predatory stink bugs. Now there's also stink bugs that are pests that feed on our plants, but there's a small proportion of them that are good stink bugs the predatory stink bugs. And this one's pretty common the spine shoulder bug. Again, you can see the triangle in the back and the half memberness swing. And these are pretty large, some of them, they can be about over an inch almost and again the nymph is smaller wingless. And they'll feed on smaller prey like this egg here. And you can identify the predacious stink bugs by the beak. If you look at the base it's very wide on the plant feeding stink bugs it's very narrow at the base. And they're also called stink bugs for a reason because they have glands on the side of the store thorax that emit a smelly stink. If you handle them. And they feed on a lot of common garden past Colorado potato beetle larvae of Europe and corn bore diamond back mall from army worm flea beetles. So just about anything they can find here you can see them feeding on a plant feeding stink bug. That's the two spotted predacious stink bug. Moving on to a new group order new opera. This includes the green and the brown lace swing. And the brown lace swing is smaller only about a half an inch whereas the green lace swing is a little bit larger about one inch. And the new opera means many veins in the wings so they're very delicate looking, and they have a weak fluttery flight so they're not one of the insects that would move long distances. But the larvae are very voracious you can see the huge, cyclical manda mandibles here and on the inside of the mandibles, there's a little groove, and when they pinch their prey, they'll suck in that groove the juices out. And the color is kind of modeled usually they're brown or dark and white in color, and they have the characteristic of when they're done feeding on like an aphid. So throw that aphid body over its back as a protective covering, which protects it from parasitoids. And then the eggs of the green lace ring are laid up on the stock, usually on leaves or other plant parts. And they do that for a reason because once that larvae hatches from the egg it's cannibalistic. So it's going to eat all the other eggs but being up on the stock they're protected. And the brown lace ring lays its egg singly on each leaf and other plant parts so you won't, they don't lay them up on the stock so if you see these on the stock it's the green lace ring. And the green lace ring likes more open fields meadows and flower gardens, whereas the brown lace wings is more common in wooded areas. Known as aphid lions, the larvae, they'll consume up to 400 aphids per week so they're excellent at keeping aphids in check. And they have beetles, coeliatra, ground beetles and tiger beetles. The tiger beetle is fairly big, it's about an inch and they're beautiful colorations, all types from black to metallic green, purple. And they have very long legs for running, they run in short bursts, and they have large eyes to see the predators and mandibles. And the larvae you do not see unless you would dig it out of its nesting hole. The eggs are laid in these holes in sandy soil, and often like along the banks of a stream, and then the female beetle will provision it with like a caterpillar. And the larvae will hatch, feed on that, and then they attach themselves in the burrow, and when a prey comes by they'll jump out and surprise it and capture it. And they're most common on the ground, just like the ground beetles are, the carabidase, the variety is just amazing and the colors from this beautiful iridescent green. They can have a black one with a metallic green, and then it has real little diamond red spots, they're just gorgeous. Quite large, they can be up to over an inch. And again, they have fast running along the soil, but they will climb occasionally up onto the leaves. And the larvae also find found underneath, you know, organic matter leaf litter and so forth in the soil. And this one here is feeding on a snail. So they're generalist predators so they're going to catch whatever they can find. Moving on, this one's everyone's familiar with lady beetles. You all recognize the red or orange beetle with black spots, some of them are black with red spots so there's a tremendous variation. The larvae you may or may not recognize, the larvae is the black and orange and then tubercles protruding from the abdomen. And the pupae I wanted to show because not everyone recognizes, I get questions every year about this, people think it's attached to the plant or the leaf. They're knocking out the juices of the leaf but that's not true. It's just transforming from the larvae to the beetle in this stage. And it's kind of, we call it a Cecil stage because it's not non feeding. So the development can take quite a long time, 48 weeks depends on the species and the temperature but they're both larvae and adult voracious aphids predators. They like scales as well, thrips and mites and insects eggs, they can consume 5,000 aphids in their lifetime. And there's many different species as I alluded to. Unfortunately, we've have a lot of non natives that were introduced for biological control classical biological control of insect pests. Unfortunately, the research has shown that some of the introduced species like the non native here the seven spotted lady beetle is displacing some of our more common native insects that are now in decline. So it's kind of sad but it's happening out there. A row of beetles this probably doesn't look like a beetle at all to you underneath this square wing pad is two pairs of membranous wings, and it can fly as an adult. About an inch or smaller, some are very small in the species, others are quite large. You'll generally find them again on the soil. Larvae are very predatious as well. And they'll, they got chewing mandapoles, and they'll feed on whatever they can find. Some of them that are smaller feed on the smaller insects like springtails and fungus gnats and thrips and mites, tiny little mites in the soil. Okay flies dip draw. This one is known as the flower fly or the hover fly. And it mimics a bee you can see it's yellow and black in coloration. And it's a fly, not a bee because it only has one pair of wings bees have two pairs. The larvae doesn't look like anything but a slug. And it's legless and it looks like it's headless but the head is up here it has retractable mandible that will pierce and suck out the juices of its prey. And the adult is actually a pollinator, and it will feed on nectar and pollen of the plant. And they'll feed up to 58 fits per day, the larvae. And then we got the predatory wasps these are the guys you might not like like the hornets, even though they're hornets and some are solitary wasps but they feed on a lot of different insects, and mainly bigger insects like here you can see it has a honeybee. Non insect predators are spiders again they have eight legs. There's a whole variety of spiders some are only night feeders on the ground others like this garden spider spins a web. And again they'll feed on good and bad bugs but mainly bad bugs. And again a non insect predator is predatory mites most most of them are a lot of them are red, and they have longer legs and they're fast moving compared to the plant feeding mites like this might here that's feeding on the plant. And they also feed on insects eggs strips and small caterpillars, as well as the bad spider mites. Here's the parastoid wasp here's the eggs this one's an ectoparasite meaning it's on the outside body of the caterpillar. Others will lay eggs singly or in groups in the inside of the caterpillar and others like this tiny little kind of wasp is going to insert one egg into that aphids body. And then that aphids body will become a balloon because it's being eaten out from the inside from that egg that is laid inside the body. It'll cut a perfect circular hole and then you'll get a nice new wasp emerging and it'll repeat the cycle many are available commercially this is Trichogramma. And then we have the parasitoids and the flies that kind of looks like a house fly, except if you look closely you can see some real stout bristles, and some of them are quite large up to an inch. And they lay their eggs generally in the circle here you can see the egg laid right on the outside, and then that'll go right into the body of its host, some of them are very specific just to one group of insects like stink bugs, or true bugs. And then there's the diseases. Here's a fungal infected aphid, you can see all the mycelial growth from the fungal disease that eventually kills that insects. But again to get good infection, you need warm temperatures and high humidity. This is a viral infected caterpillar, and the viral's destroy the cell tissue so it breaks down the cells and it becomes liquidified. Eventually it's going to eat through the exoskeleton of the insect and you'll have all that goo leaking out. And that goo is filled with billions of spores that will affect many more insects. And then there's a natural occurring soil bacterium. We, we use a lot of BT, bacillus and genesis, dipel, the trade name. And that's used a lot for our forest and caterpillars and other caterpillars that you might have. It's been no since another one. And what can we do to promote beneficial insects in the garden? You're probably already doing it if you have a pollinator garden, you know, shelter, refuge, woodpile, mulch, and then a variety of flowers. You got flowers all the way through the summer, and then provide water and nectar sources and don't use insecticides. And when you do only when necessary. And just create your beautiful garden or yard. That's going to help out all the natural enemies. And here's the extension fact sheet that we just finished and has some of them that I mentioned in here today. It's kind of just an overview. It's a two page handout that is available. And also there's many other resources out there. I would encourage you to go to the Xerces Society. They have some excellent fact sheets and books. Some of them are free. Just download them as a PDF. Cornell University has a whole guide online that you can spend in many pictures. And thank you very much. I hope that I'm done on time. And here's some pictures from my garden. Looks quite a bit different. This was taken at the beginning. Now it's a lot more filled in. Looks great, Jan. And thanks for the presentation right on time. You're a veteran. You're a professional at this all the way. So now we have time for questions and got a few coming in. First of all, Jan, when are Lady Beatles most active at feeding? Well, there's so many different species of Lady Beatles. It's kind of hard to answer, but I did quickly go over the biology. You know, it takes anywhere from four to eight weeks to go through development. So you're going to have multiple generations. So to have Lady Beatles be attracted, you have to have, you know, the host or their prey. And aphids is the most popular scale insects, thrips, generally the smaller insects, small caterpillars, eggs. So they come in after the past are there. But they've, I do a lot of research on soybean aphid, which is a key pest of soybean. And they've ruined many of my insecticide trials, because the Lady Beatles especially come in in large numbers. And they'll eat and keep the numbers of the soybean aphid below the threshold. So, yeah, it varies. It usually takes some little while to get going. So when you first see the aphids, they may not be there, but they'll be there in a couple weeks. So they have to find their warfare at night. Or is it only daytime warfare? Are they morning? You'll see them during the day as well. All the time to go after them. Yeah. Just because they got to eat 5,000 aphids. You don't have so much time. So it must always be munching. Munching or having sex, I think, because there's always aphids around. They don't even have sex, right? Yeah, the aphids that you see in the summer are mainly all females and they give birth through the process of personal genesis. So that's reproduction internally. They give birth to live young. So, and they're live young are all females. So within seven days, those young that were born are able to reproduce. So you have an exponential reproductive growth rate with the aphids. And there's no male males needed. The females are not produced usually typically until the fall, where then they go through the sexual reproduction, but during the summer it's asexual reproduction. Okay, let's get back on track. I sidetracked there a little bit. How about a BT? What is the shelf life of BT? I've had, well, it should say on the label. So read the label. And you generally you want to store it at room temperature where it's not going to be exposed to, you know, a 90 degree weather or sunlight, because it breaks down readily with sunlight. So a lot of BTs now have a sunscreen in them to help them last longer out in the field. But yeah, so I've had some that was two years old and the key to controlling caterpillars and other soft-bodied insects with the BT is time of spraying. You want to get it on when they're young caterpillars less than a half an inch long because they have to ingest it and then the BT breaks down the gut and it essentially ruptures the gut killing the insect. That's a lot of cool destruction you're talking or talk to about other insects balloon and explode and all that leak, leak guts and all that other good stuff. How about spotted winged or safflower? Are there any bio controls for that? I know they've used spinosid and they're working on biological control of the spotted winged or safflower. And then I also heard they're working on sterilization of males and doing massive release of sterilized males. Okay, that's good. Yeah, so there's a lot in the works now. I guess Minnesota's doing some work now on that. Okay, how about in the vegetable garden? Is it okay to leave spiders alone or should we destroy them too? No, definitely leave them alone. They're very good predators of most all of our past. Yeah, you know, Jan, you're so easy going like you said like 99% of insects are beneficial even like hornets and like, yeah, what's a bad insect to you? What's a non beneficial insect? Well, something that like a flea, a lice. Ticks aren't insects, but I do not like ticks. Okay. All right. How about many insect pests such as apple maggots spend the winter in the soil? Are there any bio controls that can reduce the overwintering, the survival rate? I'm trying to think now. There is, I can't think of anything you could apply. There's nematodes available, but they're more for white grubs, things that are longer lived in the soil so the nematodes can find them. And even then applying a nematode doesn't always guarantee control because you need moist soils. They need moist soils to move to find the prey. So if it's too dry, they'll be ineffective and, and they have a short life as well. So you need to get them the year you're going to use them. They can just use some traps, hang them up in the apple trees. Yeah, those red ball traps is the best to monitor for apple maggot. How about do native, generalist predatory bugs eat the non-native bugs like lily beetles? Do the native predators eat non-natives? Yes, yeah. Most of the predators are generalists, so they don't discriminate whether you're, you know, originally from Europe or Asia and introduced to the US. If you're, you know, smaller than they are, they're going to probably eat you. Okay. And they're hungry. Okay, any organic control for Japanese beetle? Well, yeah, we are concerned with Japanese beetle. There is not, it's not labeled for use in North Dakota, unfortunately, but there is a, it's like a bacteria, but it's specific to beetles that is available, but it's not labeled. I don't believe it's labeled in North Dakota. How about the spindle set, get Japanese beetles? Yeah, yes, it would. Yeah. Okay. It works on free beetles as well. But the thing with many of the microbial insecticides is they have a shorter lifespan out in the field because they get broken down. It's natural, so they get broken down easier than a synthetic insecticide. So you have to reapply them, you know, more often. How about any bio controls for potato beetles, Colorado potato beetle? There, yes, there are many predators out there as well. There's some that specialize on Colorado potato beetles and their parasitic wasps as well that attack them in terms of fungal diseases. I think you, there is some fungal sprays you could spray, but I have to look up what they are. Yeah, I think, you know, spindle set, isn't that a, that's, I'm pronouncing that right. Yeah, that's common for Colorado potato beetle now. Yeah. Okay. Okay, would you, because can potato beetles, how are easy going on? Are they doing anything good in this world or are they another, are they a bad bug, a Colorado potato beetle? Yeah, they're, they're Colorado potato beetles on notorious pass and in commercial potato fields, they're, they've developed resistant to so many insecticides. So they've been very difficult for commercial fields, you know, to control them and they're always adapting to new modes of action where barely one step ahead of them. And there's nothing good about a Colorado potato beetle. You can kill them with pleasure and don't feel guilty about it. Yeah. About, here's a mystery question. There's an insect that eats holes in the plastic edging around a garden. It eats holes in the PVC pipes on the sprinkler system and eats holes in plastic water hoses. It looks like someone took a drill and drilled holes in them. Well, I don't know for sure that that would be an insect that many insects can chew through plastic, I know, but I don't think PCV pipe. So the plastic could be anything almost that has chewing mouth parts. Yeah, I have no idea. We'd have to see the insect for that. Yes, I recommend you scout and look and scout at night and watch it. See what it is. Okay. How do you keep wasp from bothering you when you're eating outside? Well, in the, I'm assuming you're talking about hornets mainly. They're attracted to sweet drinks, anything with sugar, and also meats they like a lot. So, and they get, mainly during the fall, they get more aggressive. They're providing for a large hive, they're a social wasp. So they nest and large nest that has thousands and thousands of individuals by the end of the summer. So they get quite aggressive and searching for food for their nest. And they know they're going to die too. So they're mad. At the end of the summer, all the wasps will die, except for the queen, which is fertilized. And she leaves the nest and all the larvae that are immature and the nest will not finish their development. And then she goes to overwinter under the bark of trees. Now, doesn't the mother queen, she stays with the group and dies with her daughters, right? If she has a new queen, she makes new queens and princesses to leave. But doesn't the old mother stay there till the end? Yes. Yeah, it's the new one set emerge. We thought that's kind of romantic, almost like she stays to family stay together till the end. Yes. And all the daughters and the mother stay there freezing to death one night. I always reminds you of the Titanic going down and you know it's common and just hands and died together. Yeah, I usually recommend if you have a nest that's not like right by a door where you're going in and out all the time, but in a tree just wait and tell a real hard frost and then remove it because then you can be assured they're all dead and Yep. Cool. How about what's the approximate date that they can clean up perennials in the spring, but still allow insects time to hatch and leave the overwintering insects to leave. It's kind of a hard question because it varies like this year it's really early spring and I've seen bees and a lot of spiders and a lot of insects out already. They're already out. Yeah. So what I usually do is, because I need to get in early because I work full time and I only have so much time on the weekend. So I just throw anything I caught and remove out of my beds on the pile to mulch. And then no emerge there. Okay, last question. This is one I know this is an easy one for you as persons growing cabbages and they see these little white moths flying around. Yeah, do you have any, how can we control that. So the moth is a pollinator. They don't do any feeding but they will lay eggs on your cabbage and then they hatch into the caterpillar, which does like to feed and create holes on the leaves of the cabbage. They're heavily parasitized by wasp. So, but a lot of times that when they're parasitized a lot of times they'll still continue to feed for a little bit before they die. So you might not want to wait that long and have holes in your cabbage so use the BT dipel. And then apply it when it's their young caterpillars. Once they mature, they're done eating, and it's too late. So as soon as you see those dancing moths on the top of your cabbage, tiny little make sure you get them when they're small. They're green kind of velvety. So they blend in. You got to look closely. And the BT is safe for humans. So there's really no concerns there. Yeah, I wear gloves. It's safe for birds and other mammals. Okay, sounds good. And thank you for teaching us about all these beneficial insects.