 Welcome, everyone, to the seventh session of our 2021 Field to Fork webinar series. My name is Julie Garden Robinson and I'm a Food and Nutrition Specialist with NDSU Extension and I will be your host for today's webinar. As this slide shows, our upcoming webinars will feature Joseph Lesnick, Extension Forester, and myself. In fact, we hope you are joining us for the entire series of 11 webinars. If you miss one, they will be archived. Next, I have a special request for all viewers of both the live talk and any of the archives. To maintain our funding sources and offer these types of programs in the future, I ask that you take a very short survey that will land in your email inbox shortly after today's talk. You will have some random prize drawings, so you may receive a prize in the mail if you win. After submitting your survey, you will be redirected to a second survey and that's where you enter your name and mailing address. So if you want a chance for the prize, be sure to enter your name and address. I have two acknowledgments today. First is to the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service for our Field to Fork funding, which we've had for several years. And we also have a contribution from Purdue University through a grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and we thank all the entities for their support. And now it's my pleasure to introduce our featured speaker, Dr. Janet Canodal. Janet is a professor and extension entomologist at North Dakota State University in Fargo. For the past 22 years, she has provided statewide program leadership for extension entomology and the North Dakota Integrated Pest Management Program. Her extension outreach and applied research focuses on insect pests of field crops, gardens and pollinators. She has authored or co-authored more than 300 publications in professional extension technical and trade journals, including over 50 peer-reviewed papers and five book chapters. So welcome, Janet. It's all yours. OK, well, thank you very much, Julie, and thanks to the organizers of this event. Today I'm going to talk to you about the good creepycrawlers in your garden. And I'd like to acknowledge my colleagues, Pat Bozé, research specialist for extension entomology, and TJ Prasashka, extension crop protection specialist out at Minot. So most of us, when we think about insects, we think about insect pests and how terrible they are. Maybe they're baiting you like a mosquito. Maybe they're vectoring a virus like West Nile virus or even worse malaria. But most insects are actually beneficial. In fact, over 99% of them are beneficials, not pests, but still insects kind of have a negative name to them just because when they are a pest, they can be very devastating. But they're so good. We need them for our food. We require them for pollination. Every one out of three mouthfuls that you take is due of pollination by an insect or another organism for our fruits and vegetables. And it has a huge global market value of $577 billion. And in the U.S. alone, it's at $40 billion. So it's a huge industry. In fact, North Dakota is number one in honey bee production. And we just even outdo California and they're number two. So it's pretty close though between the two states. But we also rely on insects for natural pest control out in our gardens and in the fields. And this is what I'll be talking about today. In fact, this is free pest control. You don't have to go to the store and buy a pesticide. They're out there whether you know it or not. Another thing many beneficial insects are decomposers. They help break down the leaves, the wood that's rotting out there. And we really need them to have nutritious soils for growing our plants. We also use them in the medical field. A lot of people don't think about this, but we use the maggots for feeding on burns of victims. This helps heal the burn quicker. And like the venom and honey bees is used in arthritis medicine. So in their important food sources for our whole ecosystem, birds, many things eat insects and rely on them. So they're very important for our balancing our ecosystem and being sustainable. And we also eat insects. There's even cookbooks now on eat a bug. And if you take a look there in the chart, you can see grasshoppers fairly high in protein 20.6. So it's amazing. Look at the low fat value, but here in the US, we tend to not like to eat insects. In fact, we frown on it and turn our nose up at it, but in several underdeveloped countries, they rely on insects for good protein sources and food. So there's many different types of natural enemies. I'll be talking today mainly about predators. And I'll just talk a little bit about parasitoids and what they are and some diseases that attack and kill insects. And then some other earthopods that are related to insects, the mites and spiders. So first, I just want to give a little overview on predator versus parasitoid. A predator, there's a lot of different species and we'll cover only a handful today. But it's very diverse in terms of what groups of insects are predators. And parasitoids are mainly wasps in the hymenoptera order. And you can see one in the picture there. They generally have a narrow waist. Predators are more generalists, meaning they'll feed on a wider range of insect hosts, whereas parasitoids will be more specialist. Some of them are so specialized, they may be just on one species of insect and one life stage like the egg of that particular. And because they're more specialized, they can make better biocontrol agents in some cases than predators. Predators are usually larger than their prey, so they can overcome it and consume it. Whereas parasitoids are usually smaller than their host. And they often, the female wasps will have a long, narrow ovipositor, which they insert often into the body of their host, like the one in the picture. She's inserting her ovipositor into the caterpillar body. But others lay the eggs on the outside of the body or they'll lay them near the host on the vegetation. For predators, there's males, female predators, and the adult stage, and then there's immature, they all may be predators. Whereas parasitoids, it's only the immature stage that developing egg out of that egg will hatch a larvae and that larvae will feed on the inside of the host and eat it out from the inside. That's when the eggs laid on the inside of the body, endoparasite. When it's laid on the outside of the body, ectoparasite, it will often tunnel into the body then. And then predators will attack both immature and adult prey. And parasitoids can be more specific. They may attack several different life stages of a host, but some, as I mentioned earlier, may just be specific on the egg or the immature stage, the caterpillar, or the adult stage. So we're going to start with predators. And I'm just going to go through some of the more common ones that you're most likely to see out in your garden. I'm going to start with one of my favorites, the green lacewing and the brown lacewing. Brown lacewing is in the upper right-hand corner and the green lacewing is in the center photograph. And you can see the green one is bright green, whereas the brown one is more drab brown. But if you take a close look at the wings, you can see they're like a network of many veins and very delicate. In fact, when they fly, they have kind of a weak, fluttery fight and they're not strong flyers. The green lacewing is one of my favorites. They have beautiful golden eyes. This one is found more commonly in gardens and open areas, pastures and grassy areas, whereas the brown lacewing is more common in wooded areas. The larvae is slender and long. They have a cyclical mandible that's very long and protrudes from the front of the head. And that's what they use for grasping the prey. They kind of look like an alligator. And on the inside of that mandible, there's a little groove and that's where they once they puncture the body of the prey, the fluids from the body of the other prey will be sucked up into the lacewing larvae. They're usually kind of brown and white and modeled, modeling on the and coloring. The development time is about 40 days. It depends on the temperature, but we'll have multiple generations per year. And here you can see the eggs of the green lacewing. They're laid up on stalks, usually on the underside of the leaves. This picture was taken on some hosta. And they do that for a reason, because once that egg hatches and the larvae crawls down, it's cannibalistic. So if the other eggs were laid on the leaf, it would eat them. So they are very voracious and have a huge appetite. They can eat up to 50 aphids a day. Now, the brown lacewing lays their eggs single on the underside of the leaves of trees. But they both, all of them, both species, like aphids. They just love aphids and small caterpillars and thrips. They will attack other soft-bodied insects like mites, white flies, and mealybugs. So lady beetles, this is a favorite of most people, and they're easy to identify. Most of them are orange, red, and color. There's some black ones. And then they usually have black and white markings on their wing covers. And they can be quite large, you know, quarter of an inch to third of an inch is probably the most common. And you see, I featured two species, the multicolored Asian lady beetle and the seven-spotted lady beetle. And these are both invasive lady beetles that were introduced into the U.S. for biological control. And it's kind of sad, but now some of these species they introduced are more aggressive than our native species of lady beetles. And like the seven-spotted lady beetles, actually displacing many species of our native lady beetles, like the nine-spotted lady beetle. So it's kind of sad, but research has documented that it's fairly common and widespread. Larvey are a little more difficult, and I get people sending me pictures every year to ask what they are. But they're black and usually orange markings on them. And they too kind of look like an alligator, but they have smaller chewing mouth parts. And the pupae, I wanted to make sure everyone understands what this is. It's a transformation stage where the insect is transforming from the larvae to the adult stage. So it's non-feeding and it's not doing any damage to that leaf. I get a lot of questions. People see it's attached to the leaf or the stem and they think it's something that is sucking the juices out of the plant. But that's not true. It's just the transformation stage where the adult beetle will emerge. And here you can see the life cycle. It takes four to eight weeks to go from egg to adult. And the eggs are usually orange or yellowish in color and they're laid commonly in groups on the underside of leaves. And we have the larval stage and they'll go through several growth stages, 20 to 30 days. And then the pupil stage is fairly short. And then the adult stage will emerge. And we'll have multiple generations a year. And then whichever stage it's, well, usually it overwinters then towards the end of the year as an adult beetle. They find shelter either in our homes like the Asian lady beetle likes to move into the homes. But most lady beetles will overwinter in tree bark or beef debris in wooded areas. Both the adult and larvae are voracious aphid predators. They can consume up to 300 aphids a day and over 5,000 aphids over their whole life cycle. So an aphids are by far the favorite and then scales, I would say. Mealybugs, white flies, thrips and insect eggs, anything smaller than they are. And here's, there's many different species of lady beetles in North America. So they're fairly, you can't always count the spots because sometimes they will have spots and sometimes they will not have spots. Like most of these in this diagram are the Asian multicolored lady beetle. But here you can see there's one here with no spots and here's one with many spots. So you can't just count spots all the time and identify it. You have to use some of the other characteristics. So moving on to the order hymnictra, which is true bugs. This one is a minute pirate bug. It's very tiny and you probably are not going to see it unless you do some looking for it. It's very fast moving and when they see you coming, they're going to hide. And the adult has a little diamond area or triangle area in between the pro thorax behind the head and the abdomen here. And this order, the hymnictra, that's one of the characteristics. So you can quickly tell it's a true bug by seeing if it has that triangle. And it has black and white coloring and then there's kind of a brown band in the middle. And it's also called hymnictra. Hami means half and then Tara means wing. So it means half wing. And here you can see the half of the wing is membranous and then the other half here is solid. So it means half wing. So that's another thing you can look for with this group. Now the nymphs are much smaller and wingless. And this particular species are bright green with red eyes. Now both the adults and nymphs will feed on small, soft bodied insects and mites. This one in the picture is feeding on the crawler stage of scale insects. They have piercing, sucking mouth parts. So they'll pierce that body of the host and then suck the juices out. And they have multiple generations per year. But again, you can see fairly wide host range. Aphids, thrips, mites, scales, small caterpillars and insect eggs. But this one's pretty small. So he's only going to go after things that are smaller than it. So moving to some of the larger ones in the hymnictra order, assassin bug and ambush bug. In the upper right hand corner, this is an ambush bug. This is one of my favorites. They have raptorial forelegs that they use for grabbing their prey. And they're often hiding in flowers. So you'll see them in there. And unfortunately, they do capture bees that are visiting the flowers. So the predators are generalists. So they will sometimes feed on some pollinators and other insects. We don't want them to kill. And then here we have the wheel bug. You can see this kind of looks like a wheel. So this is where it gets its name from. But look at that beak. That's what they use for killing their prey. They stab that into their prey. And then we'll suck their juices out. And then, in general, they have about four weeks and one generation per year. But you can see now we're starting to get to some larger insects, the grass uppers, the larger caterpillars, beetles, bees and wasps and flies with some of these larger predators. So back to a small one. This is a big eyed bug. And if you take a look at it, you can see why it got its name. The eyes are quite large on it. And it has fairly long antennae. The development time is 50 days and one generation per year. And again, they have the piercing sucking mouth parts, much smaller beak. But they'll go after the smaller prey. True bugs, beetles, caterpillars, flies, thrips and mites. And again, the nymph is here in top. It looks just like the adult, but it just has wing pads, no wings, so it can't fly yet. Another one in the hemitra order, damsel bugs. These are generally drab, brown color. And they have long legs and long antennae and they can move fairly quickly. And again, you can see the triangle indicating that it is a true bug. And both the nymph and the adult will prey on different insects. It takes about five weeks to go through development time and five or more generations a year. And you can see many leaf hoppers and leaf beetles are new compared to what some of the other ones were preying on. But they're fairly common and they're pretty easy to see in your garden. Now here's the predatory stink bugs. Now we also have stink bugs that feed on our plants and damage them and they are significant past. But you can tell if it's a predatory, a good stink bug by looking at the beak. And if you look at the base of the beak, it's quite broad, whereas the plant feeding stink bug will have a more narrow base for feeding and injecting that into the plant tissue. And when they feed on the plants, they inject a toxin, which often gives the plants a brown spot or some kind of discoloration. They often feed on like corn, seeds, and other fruits. So the development time is about seven weeks and there's one generation per year. But they are excellent predators on several garden pests that are fairly common, our Colorado potato beetle, our European cornbore, diamond-backed moth on your cabbages and other brachaceae plants, army worms in the flea beetles on your cabbage and your other types, kale and other also brachaceae type plants. And they'll feed on anything that they can get, larger caterpillars and smaller things too, like the insect eggs. He fireflies and lightning bugs. We typically probably don't think about these as a predator. There we usually enjoy the light shows, usually late summer, mid to late summer. We start to see them. And the adults in general are more pollen and nectar feeders. But there is one species that mimics the light attraction of another species. And then they will, once it brings in the other species, it'll kill that species. But in general, they're not predators. It's mainly the larval stage that is the predator. And they have huge mandibles that will they'll chew on snails, slugs, caterpillars, white grubs, earthworms and other soft-bodied insects. And they're found only in the soil, leaf debris under rotting logs and that type of thing. So you won't see them up on the foliage feeding on insects. They have a long development time, one year. And they could take as long as two years to go through their whole life cycle from egg to adult. Ground beetles and tiger beetles. Tiger beetles are up in the upper right hand corner here. You can see they have very large eyes and long legs. They run very fast and they have protruding mandibles, which they use to capture and tear apart their prey. They're very beautiful. Some of them have all different kinds of spots on them. They'll be metallic green and purple. So some tiger beetles are just absolutely gorgeous. You're most likely to see these in sandy soils. They like to run fast so they like more open areas. So you may or may not see them. They're common down in sandy banks, down by streams. So if you have a stream on your property, you might have some tiger beetles. Ground beetles are in the lower pitchers. They're very beneficial insects. And as the name ground, they spend most of the time on the ground. They can run very fast, just like the tiger beetle. And they capture their prey usually on the ground, but they will wander up onto the foliage once in a while. They have a one year development time and they can live up to four years as adults. One generation per year as well. Some common prey are aphids, other small insects and caterpillars, anything on the ground, snails, slugs. Another thing about the ground beetles is they love to eat weed seeds. There's been a lot of research done in no-till farming systems. And we found that the ground beetles were removing all of the weed seeds in no-till type situations compared to conventional teal. So they're very beneficial to have around because they have enormous appetites for seeds, as well as for other insects, shoulder beetles. They have kind of leathery wings and they're kind of soft bodied as some adults. And they like open flowers where you can, they're fairly good sized, about half an inch or bigger, depending on the species. And they like the land and they feed primarily on the pollen and maybe a little bit on the nectar as well. But as adults, they're really not predacious. It's mainly the larval stage that you see there. And again, that is found mainly in the soil in the leaf debris and under logs and moist situations. Fairly long development time again, one year, and it takes one to two years to go through their whole life cycle. But a lot of, you know, insects lay eggs in the soil and leaf debris. You know, so these types of predators are feeding on those insect eggs, caterpillars, worms, anything that is down there, snails and slugs, rove beetles. They're kind of don't even look like an insect because you don't see their wings. But underneath this plate here on the is the wing cover and they have membranous wings that are folded underneath there. And in general, they're they're long and skinny. And I've seen big ones and then there's very, very tiny ones so the size can range quite a bit. And both the adults in the immature stage are predatious up to 20 days to a year for development. And depending on the species, you can have one generation per year, multiple. And they prey on just about anything you can find down mainly in the soil. They like moist environment, so they're often found down under the wood chips, under the leaves, helping with breaking down some of the soil organic matter. Surfeit flies are also called hover flies. They can mimic bees, as you see in the picture. They're kind of yellow and black and they're flies, though, not bees. You can tell they're a fly because they only have one pair of develop wings, whereas a bee would have two pairs of membranous wings. So there's a lot of diversity in this group, but they're very good predators as larvae. The adult are pollen and nectar feeders, and they actually do help with pollination. You can see here's the larvae. It's headless and legless. And inside this is the head end. And there's a retractable mandible inside there, and it'll bring it out when it wants to grab aphid, for example. And when they're hunting, they swing their head from side to side as they look for prey. So you can use that as an identification characteristic. They're yellow like this one you see here. I've seen brown and blackish-colored ones, too. Some of them have, you know, modeled markings on them. So there's huge diversity in the surfered flies. It takes about four to ten weeks to go through the development. And then they can have multiple generations a year, depending how warm it is. And they have many different prey, but they do love aphids and scale in other smaller prey, like the mealybugs, mates, and thrips. Taganid flies, they kind of look, you might think they look like a housefly, especially the one in the lower picture. But if you take a closer look, you'll see they have some really stiff whistles on them, and they're sometimes very long as well. So that's a good characteristic that you can use for identification. Um, this fly itself does not feed on other insects, but it feeds mainly on pollen and nectar. And they may help, too, with pollination as well. But the female fly will insert her egg into the body of her host, like a caterpillar, or it'll lay it on the outside of the caterpillar, or even on the leaf, which is wherever there's hosts nearby. So when the caterpillar hatches from the egg, it'll be able to find something to feed on. So but they go after quite a wide variety. And you can see they're quite large, some of them over up to an inch almost. And they'll go after the true bugs, grasshoppers and some of the larger insects that we have feeding on our plants. Predatory wasps, as you can see, wasps have that narrow abdomen, which you can use for identification. Unfortunately, it looks like this one is carrying a honeybee. But yeah, they're not specific to whatever they will capture as their prey. They'll sting it and paralyze it. It'll still be alive. And then they bring it back to their nest in the soil and they provide their they'll be an egg in that nest, which will hatch into the larvae. And then they provide the larvae with this bee. And the larvae will use that for its development to complete its development. So they are beneficial and a lot of people don't like wasp around the house because they can sting you hornets, for example. They have a fairly short development time, about 40 days. So we'll have multiple generations per year, depending on the species of wasps. Other common prey is caterpillar, beetles, flies, true bugs, grasshoppers and caterpillars twice in aphids as well. Mantids, a lot of people love mantids. But as far as the biocontrol agent, they're not the best. For one thing, they'll feed on whatever they can catch. There's even reports of mantids catching hummingbirds at hummingbird feeders and and actually injuring them. So I don't really like mantids. And I wouldn't recommend that you buy it like a Chinese mantid egg case. You can buy those from some outfits and put them into your garden. But they're not going to survive here in North Dakota. And this is invasive insect pests. And we don't really want them around. They'll be displacing some of our native species. So most of the species of mantids that are found here were introduced. There's also the European mantid. And then there's the Carolina mantid as well. But they have a fairly long development time, 10 to 12 months and one year. And they go after anything they can catch. They're fairly large, as you know. So there they can go after some of the larger insects. They'll go after bees and other pollinators. Spiders, this is a beneficial group. Again, they're not specific to what they attack. They are generalists and they'll go after bees and other things. Maybe we don't want them killing. But it's good to see spiders in the garden. Most some of them are active at night time. Others are daytime hunter hunters. Some of them are just crawl like the wolf spider. Others like the orb weaver will build webs to trap insects in. But in general, they're good insects. Hopefully you don't see the hobo spider. This is one down south has a terrible nasty bite and the injective venom that prevents the wound from healing. So you actually have to have skin grafting done. And it looks much like our common wolf spider that we do have here. And you can see this one has a little violin on the back and that's how you can identify it. So we don't have this one here. It doesn't survive our cold winters. But people have brought it up when they've moved up from the southern states. Development time is one to three years, depending on the species. And in general, there's just one generation per year. But they feed on just about anything that they can capture, even things that are larger than spiders. Predatory mites, mites are and spaders are not insects. Insects have six legs and mites and spaders as adults have eight legs. And you can always tell a predatory might because they have longer legs and they run much faster than the plant feeding mites that we don't like to see. They're very small, microscopic, so you may need a hand lens. They're often found in the underside of the leaves. And mites generally start from the bottom and vegetation, and then they work their way up. So you can check out to see if you have mites by using a white sheet of paper on a clipboard and just wrapping the vegetation over that. And then you'll see them. They look like a dot, a very tiny dot on the white sheet of paper. And then you use your hand lens to identify whether it's a predacious might, which will be faster moving than the slow plant feeding might like the two spotted spider might. They have very short life cycle. They love the nineties, at least the plant feeding mites do. They can develop a little the whole life cycle in three to five days. So you can see how the populations could explode when it's hot and dry. Something to watch for this upcoming season, because we're in a severe drought. Most of North Dakota is moderate to severe. When the temperatures are cooler, it can take over a week to complete development. But they can have as many as 10 generations per year. So you can see how the population can explode. The unfortunately, the predatory mites do not like the nineties. They prefer the more moderate temperatures in the eighties. So they don't do as well. And that's why the spider mites that feed on the plants get ahead of them. But they'll feed on other things other than our bites, scales, white flies, aphids, leaf hoppers, caterpillars and insect eggs and thrips. So there's quite a few other things to feed on if the mites aren't present. So you still may have them, but they are difficult to find. You got to do some scouting and get down and look at the foliage and so forth. And again, if you're if you do have plant feeding mites, remember, insecticides are for insects. They're not necessarily efficacious on mites that are going to be feeding on your plants. So you're best off maybe using a botanical like safer insecticide or soap or neem or just using a heavy stream of water, trying to wash the mites off. And you'll have to, you know, do it several times. Parasitic wasps or parasitoids. It can vary for the development time, 10 to 12 months and about one generation a year. They love to lay eggs inside or outside. This caterpillar has the eggs that were laid originally on the inside of the body. And then the larvae have emerged and spun cocoons. And from the cocoon, you can see a wasp here, adult wasp emerging. So this one, you know, happens to lay multiple eggs per host. But some are very specific and will only lay like one egg. And parasitic wasps are very specific and they're very useful in biocontrol, especially when you're targeting like a specific insect that might be a major pass like European corn borer. There's a trichogram of wasps that have been fairly successful in mitigating some of its damage. And they're commercially available. You can buy them through our suppliers of biological control organisms. And I just wanted to show you what an aphid mummy looks like. This is a aphid that has been parasitized by a wasp. And they blow up like a balloon and the wasp ate out the inside of the aphid. So it's hollow inside. Eventually, it's going to emerge and it'll create a circle hole here. Perfect circle. And then the adult wasp will emerge. So if you see these, they don't move. So you can tell it's not a live aphid. There's they just hollow body. You can easily crush them. And inside there's a parasitic wasp. If you see a hole in it, it's already emerged. So then there's many diseases that infest or infect aphids. Here in the picture, you can see a soy mean aphid that has been affected by a fungal disease. And you can see how it becomes kind of granular. These are the mycelium that will release spores of the fungi and that further gets out into the environment. They do best when the temperature is moderate, you know, in the 80s. And we have a lot of moisture and high humidity. So it does require good environmental conditions to get up as a zoolotic outbreak of diseases. There's viral infections as well. They actually break down the cells of the insect and it becomes a liquid goo in the middle of the insect. Eventually, the outer skin will rupture and that liquid will come out and it will release literally billions of spores, which will infect other caterpillars. Unfortunately, a lot of times the diseases occur late in the season and often the damage is already done by then. But sometimes we do have favorable environmental conditions and they do provide good biocontrol. And they are sold as microbial insecticides that are available commercially. Probably the most common one is a common occurring soil bacterium, bacillus thuringiensis, BT. It's the same BT that's put into our corn crops that is used for corn, European corn boron, corn rootworm control. As a foliar spray, it's called dipel. It's safe for other organisms like birds and other insects because it has to be ingested. So you have to spray it, though, when the caterpillars are young, usually a half inch or less. Spinosid is another bacteria that's natural and occurring. And this one is useful on caterpillars and flea beetles and several other insects. So there's lots of things you can do to promote beneficial insects in your garden. You're probably already doing them, you know, providing refuges for them, grassy areas, wood piles and mulches. And then you're probably already planting a variety of flowers so they bloom the whole summer long. What benefits the pollinators also will benefit many of the beneficial insects that feed on the nectar and pollen. And then also providing some water or nectar sources. This is a butterfly nectar feeder where you put a sugary solution in there and then you can also put fruit on the top of it as well. Bird bass you can use, but they're generally too deep for insects. You need a real shallow water dish if you're going to use that because they'll drown. I've seen a lot of bumblebees and not bumblebees, but honeybees drowning in bird bass, you know, they're an inch or more deep. And then don't use chemicals at all is my recommendations. Or if you do have to, you know, use more natural occurring chemicals like botanicals, safer insecticidal soap, insect growth regulators and only spot spray. So just beautify your garden or yard. That's going to provide good resources for the natural enemies. They need nectar, the parasitoids also feed on nectar and pollen. So they're attracted to the flowers and these insect hotels will provide places for lady beetles and others to hide and get away from predators and even over winter in. So we did finish a new fact sheet called Common Natural Enemies of Insect Pests. You can just Google NDSU and natural enemies and it should pop up. It's just a front back and it just has the highlights on how to identify some of the most common ones that we see in gardens and in the field. And also here's some of the pollinator resources that are available. Anything that you do for butterflies or be gardening will be beneficial for the natural enemies. So you may want to look up some of these resources as well. And I just love the information from Xerces Society. They have a lot of information on beneficial insects. So you might check that out and a lot of it's free. You can download the PDF and print it out. And Cornell University has an excellent site on a guide to natural enemies in North America. Lots of pictures and how to identify a lot of information on efficacy of the different natural enemies. So thanks and for your time. If we'll have I'll take any questions if there's time. And also you can email me at janet.canodalandndsu.edu. Thank you so much, Janet. Yeah, you have several questions, so I'm just going to start at the top. First, well, earlier, someone said fabulous pictures, so I thought you might enjoy that. Thanks. And there was a link posted in the chat about the cricket flower story. It was in both, I guess, Jamestown and Fargo. And let's see. So what are the biting lady bugs? Are they good bugs? Oh, I am also lady bugs. If you pick them up and handle them, they, you know, could bite you. I would say they're not aggressive at all. But the Asian lady beetle, the one that's introduced, is a little more aggressive. And that one has been the one that's most commonly complained about that is biting you. And I think the seven spotted lady beetle will also bite. That's fairly large. But in general, their mandibles are too small to break your skin. So it's like a little pinch. I guess I know some people are more sensitive than others, too. So and they may be allergic to, you know, bites might cause allergic reaction. But in general, you know, they will not. Cause any injury or they don't carry any diseases or. Does your publication cover which bugs bite the new publications you showed us? No, that would be, you mean more, you're talking more about insect pests? OK, I know that would be a different publication that we'd have to work on. There's a lot of so many, you know, that can bite you. But in general, most insects are not aggressive. They tend, like I said, at the beginning, insects tend to get a bad name, you know, from some some of the bad insects like hornets that are super aggressive in the fall. So but, you know, bumblebees, a lot of people will pet bumblebees. They're that tame. Really? Yeah, I just gently with your finger you can pet them while they're busy buzzing around the flowers. I want to see a video of that. Yeah, there is several online. So just Google petting bumblebees. I'm sure there'll be some that pop up. But yeah, most I would encourage you to get out and scout and look for the natural enemies. You'll be surprised how many are out there. A lot of times they may not be effective, you know, and preventing 100 percent damage. But I think that's where we need to, you know, increase our tolerance level and maybe ignore some damage. Usually plants can tolerate some damage, you know, without really affecting whether they'll come back again if it's perennial next year. So Carol has a question and she says, last year I found earwigs in some of my potted plants. Are they bad bugs? Do I want to get rid of them? If so, how? Earwigs, there's different species of earwigs. Some of them are plant feeders. And they are usually in the soil and they'll feed on usually decaying. So maybe the plant may have a disease or sick. They could, though, if there's high numbers, they could attack a healthy plant. And mainly they'll be feeding on the root system or at the crown. But in general, we don't have the real high numbers, you know, that you would see drying out your bed. They need moisture. They like moist areas. So only water when your soils actually needs it. We don't always have control over that, though. But it looks like a dry year this upcoming year. So we're probably going to have to do more watering. So Ron has a question about wasps, specifically the one that go after ripening apples. Are there any control options besides sprays? No, there's a lot of wasps will like to feed on the ripening fruits, raspberries and other fruits as well. Main thing is just to pick them as soon as they're ripe and pick up the ones from the ground and throw them onto your mulch pile or into the woods and try to minimize the ones that are attracting them. Attracting them that are decaying on the ground. Usually they have to be getting soft or at least fairly ripe before they'll go after them. But they do have chewing mandibles, so they can break the skin of especially raspberries and softer skin fruits. But usually apples, the birds, what I usually see in my apple orchard is the birds peck on them. And then they come in and start to chew on them. So I usually pick those off as soon as I see them and get rid of them because then the hornets are attractive. But I don't do any spraying. So May has a question and a comment about BT. It's her understanding that BT is not selective with caterpillars and kills all butterflies and other good guy caterpillars too. Is that correct? Yes, that's why you want a spot treat. You don't spray the whole tree. I had 10 caterpillars feeding on my plum tree. And I saw the caterpillars are usually in large groups. So I just sprayed the few leaves. I caught it early when they were very small, less than a half an inch long. And it worked great. I didn't spray the whole tree. I just sprayed the general area where they were clumped. So Renee has a question about Japanese beetles. She had so many of them last year. And I assume this means she's from Wisconsin. And this was great finds. Yes. They're hard to control. Very hard. I don't know how large your vineyard is, but if you can do some hand removal where you put them into a can of soapy water and just knock them off. I mean, they're so large. The Japanese beetle. You can pick them up right off. It's not fun. They have spines on their legs. And okay. She said, yes, she did hand removal. So, okay. And yeah, so they move around their strong flyers. The only other thing you could do is put a, get some knitting and put that over it to prevent them from being infested. So we'll end today during a pandemic about murder hornets. Okay. Should we be concerned about murder hornets in this area? I know they are especially dangerous to honey bees. Yes. Well, of course we are concerned. Cause they can be introduced anywhere really. But at least the, where they're been found, I believe it was Washington. They have a regulatory program going on where they're trying to eradicate them. So they're doing observations to find them and looking for them around their beehives. And then they're following the hornets back to the, their high, the, in the trees. And then killing them or destroying their nest. So hopefully they won't get here in North Dakota. It would be terrible if they do. And we are concerned about it. And I think that North Dakota department of ag is, I think they may even be doing some monitoring, I believe. Okay. Well, we're going to close out our session for today. And I see there are several more messages. So if it's okay, can they reach out directly to you with their questions? Yes, that would be fine. Okay. Well, thank you so much. This was a great presentation with beautiful pictures. And I'm a little afraid of insects, so thanks a lot. And thanks to everyone for attending today. We hope you join us again next week. Thank you and have fun gardening.