 So welcome again everybody, I'm going to talk about something unusual, especially that's very close to my heart, as I work with many small farmers. And, and that's related to beneficial insects we usually talk about pest insects because we feel like they're overwhelming us they're everywhere but majority of the insects have an ecological role and they're beneficial and we should not forget that. So this this presentation is an attempt to show you some of my favorites on beneficial insects and some of the ways you can get them commercially so kind of focusing on these commercially available insects in fact if you come to an extension event. I'll try to bring out my collection of beneficial insects actual products so I try to carry it on with me. Kind of a vast collection of these beneficial insects to show you, but I'll show you a few things today. So again, once again I always start out with a statement that all our programs are open to everybody who anyone is welcome. So when we talk about best management we know we talk about these three levels of best management and you may have heard me speak multiple times. The level one level two and level three, but you'll notice that on the on the left hand of the screen, I always emphasize on natural enemy conservation, and there's several ways you can conserve natural enemies, what you already have we don't want to delete them from the ecosystem and some some ways us to provide habitats, keep some habitats, wildflowers and there's several cover crop mixtures that help beneficial insects keep them there, reduce your pesticide use don't spray unnecessarily. This also causes a set resistance with overuse of chemicals, or even organic products so it doesn't matter so we just need to back off and do our best and then targeted spray a very important is target your spray applications to where it's needed. Don't unnecessarily douse these plants with pesticides and because they are very very harmful very quickly, the beneficial insects can be lost very quickly. So just a quick reminder about these now there are about three different types of natural enemies out there, this is one of the slides that are one of our past students and postdoc put together and I continue to use it. And it's evolving, but we have predators, parasitoids or parasites, and then insect pathogens, these are the three general natural enemies. And of course you recognize the, the lady beetle, there are several others will talk about, but lace wings assassin bugs there are just amazing range of insects that are predators they will eat any of anything that's smaller than them, typically. Then you have the parasitoids, or parasites, they're kind of slow acting but they kill the insects, the pest insect internally, and then insect pathogens that's where I still do a lot of research on the BTs. Which is the bacteria bacillus thuringiensis, the fungi, and then, or fungi, I don't know how you want to say it, and then viruses. The good thing about pathogens is they are more specific. So this there's some level of safety there. There are three types of natural enemies. Now this is a very important slide, where I just wanted to show you that, you know, you cannot just tell insects by their colors, or their shapes you have to sometimes look a little bit deeper. There are insects that are difficult to identify a lot of times these sting bugs get a bad rap that they're all bad. They're actually predatory sting bugs that you can identify by looking at their mouth parts. And the one with the red arrow on your screen has a short, very thick beak, it's like a proboscis or beak. It ends in that dark area, which is very sharp. So that's a predator that will pinch the body of a caterpillar, for example, or aphids and suck the juice out. So just remember that not all insects are bad. We have to be very careful. And if you can take pictures from different angles, don't just send us pictures for identification from the top. Go on the side. Sometimes the side profile helps me identify some of these insects quickly. So just a little tips there to help you and always take good pictures. That's very important, but we are surrounded by beneficial insects. So we have to do a better job of conserving them. Here are some of my favorites that are commercially available. So again, I'm not talking about a vast range of non-commercial or the ones that are naturally present. There are so many beneficial insects. And I can do a follow up on the other species of beneficial insects, but this is just the ones that you can buy online. I'm going to talk about that here a little bit. Green lacewings. These lacewings are some of my favorite insects just because they are very aggressive predators. In fact, they're so aggressive, they'll actually kill each other if they can't find food. But these lacewings are very delicate insects. You'll see them coming to your backyard light. They have these large flimsy looking wings and they crash into light bulbs and any bright source of light. But they're aggressive. The adults and the larva, you can see the larva on the bottom of the screen with those giant mandibles sticking out in front of the head. So very aggressive predators. And the good trick to this is if you want immediate control of say aphids in your high tunnel, you should get these larvae. And those larvae will go hunting as you release them. Don't wait for the adults. You can also get adults if you want to kind of have a longer generation and some more persistence then get the adults. Otherwise you can get the larvae. So these choices you can do. And they're also aggressive on mites. I have not seen them feed on mites but some of the literature indicates they're also very good at feeding on mites. So anything that's small, they will feed on these small insects and they don't huddle as much as some of the lady beetles do. So they spread out pretty uniformly. So this is just some ways they are being sold in the market. They are sold as, I think my pointer is moving hopefully on the screen, but these are sold as these hex cell units. These are cardboard and they have the larvae, the eggs, and then they hatch into larvae. By the time they come to you, you can have some larvae in there. But these are like cardboard units. You can also buy them in wood filling. These larvae are extremely small by the way. That picture is a lot, lot bigger than what they really look like in reality. And then of course you can get the adults. And so there's different ways you can get these products which is really great. And we'll talk about some of the tips of how to order them. But again, these are mostly preventive type. So you don't want to wait if you find aphids and you want to use them, use them as soon as you can. Don't wait for the aphids to blow up on you and this way too many because then you already have a crop damage. So release them early. Of course everyone loves Ladybeetle. So the one that is commercially available very commonly is the convergent Ladybeetle. And it's called the convergent Ladybeetle because it's on the back of the thorax right behind the head. There's two lines that seem to converge. And that's how it gets its name. So it's convergent Ladybeetle. Again the larvae is in the middle. It's an ugly looking larva. Larva, a lot of the gardeners and farmers sometimes think that what is that some kind of a new best it's not. It's a very ugly looking but very aggressive predator. This is the larva of the Ladybeetle and the eggs are laid in bunches and they're fairly easy to identify. But again, these are very aggressive predators of a large number of species. Aphids even moth eggs and they're widely sold. The only problem I've seen them is they are sensitive to day length. And when your, when we have fall coming from the summer to fall doing that transition phase sometimes the Ladybeetle start to huddle together in the corner of a high tunnel, or on the crops or even they try to enter your house. So you may be familiar with the Asian Ladybeetle. So they're very similar in habit, but they are very popular. And, and they come with these, if you buy these, these, sometimes they come in cloth bags. And sometimes they are in these plastic jars with food in them. So it keeps the insects alive. Now one thing I will recommend is if you get these, you don't necessarily have to release them immediately, all of them, you can release them sequentially and wait. So do it one week and then release more the following week. So you don't have to release everything at once. If you keep them in the in the cool in the fridge, not freeze them to death, but in the fridge, just to calm them down, and they will stay for for a week or so. I've tried that and I have been successful. So for some of our lab experiments we have done that and that works out. But again, make sure they have food, they have, they have enough water, the little cotton ball that's in there, keep it soaked with water. So I can just a few little tips, but there's so many different ways these Ladybeetles can be purchased from websites. And you can actually see some of the websites and the pictures there. Another one that I have tried and and farmers love it is this one is the prairie bug, the aureus species. And they're sold commercially they are very successful from ornamentals using the ornamental industry to fruit and vegetable, especially greenhouses. Again, I think they spread through the greenhouses and and indoor ag structures very nicely, if you release them. And they're very aggressive. You can see some of these pictures from the websites and the commercial sellers, but they're very popular in Europe. Sometimes there's a backlog, if you try to order them in to US there, they come, they may come from from another source with all kinds of paperwork attached. But make sure you give enough time to get them. This is one of those biological products with the prairie bug. So it comes in a nice jar, a nice bottle. This one's called Ori line, because the insect is or yes, and they have all the directions there the the wonderful thing is these directions for example tells you like they may go into diapause. If you're light and temperature are not optimal. Pay attention to those details. Humidity is very important for any of these biological agents. They just don't like drought. If you have very dry conditions. That's typically not very good for these these these beneficial insects so you need a certain level of humidity to maintain inside your structure or our field. And they do better. There are a large number of prairie mites. We have seen them being used in the ornamental industry, as well as on some large greenhouses, but you have to release these mites very close to the infestation, where you have infestations for example of two spotted spider mites which is one of the most predominant pest species, and these prairie mites will aggressively feed. They come in these little jars. So you're actually seeing a product that we have got and I intentionally test these I buy them to see how effectively they come. And I may give them away to a farmer but or a demonstration project, but I want to keep on testing how these companies package these products and they do a really good job of sending you these in a styrofoam box. And they come overnight so and there's so many species to choose from for ranging from your kind of dry conditions if you're in a hot dry environment to more conditions but there's more humidity. And then some some are a little bit more species specific compared to the others. The one that's very popular is galantromous, Occidentalis that's an Amblesius those are very popular, popular ones that are on the top mentioned the slide there. But these are again great mites they look different so you can actually look at them through a handheld magnifying glass, if you want. Quickly about parasitoids, Trichogramma is one of these parasitoids so these are parasites. These are like tiny tiny wasps they're very small they look like dust particles if you open a while off of these parasitoids they just practically look like dust particles, very small, hardly visible, but Trichogramma will lay eggs inside these these moth eggs you can see the female they're trying to lay eggs inside this pest insect eggs, and those the larva will develop and it'll keep on perpetuating for some time and and they will start to destroy these eggs. And then very good parasites, I think one of the largest selling parasites is Trichogramma. I've seen it being used on large acres and from sugarcane fields to some of the other crops in Asia and in and India but yeah to grammar is very popular and easily available. Let me see if you got if you're a gardener you may have seen your horn worms tomato horn worms with these funny looking look like rice grains stuck on the back of these horn worms, but these are the quotation is a natural parasite, but these are the most rare wasps that that lady eggs and then the these are the cocoons of the pupil of that wasp. And they essentially destroy caterpillar so if you see them, don't remove them they look ugly, but that caterpillar is going to die and those wasps that come out will reinfest other other horn worms and even army worms. These are good good good insects so don't remove the ones that are infested like this so it's a very, very common and again on a typical in a wet cooler summers, you will see a lot of parasitization. So they like that moisture in the cooler weathers. If you want more information, we actually have a publication that I checked is online is in our 1432 if you want to write that down, but it's best management in high tunnels that actually has a list of products again I don't know which products are still available from corporate or Sinjenta by line I don't even know if Sinjenta actually still has by line, but you can check on your own, but there are so many choices, if you are interested. And those product names often are related to the scientific names of these beneficial insects so there's a lot of good information. Just a quick suppliers, some of the things that I have tried there might be others so disclaimer that I'm not favoring one company over the other, but I have definitely tried our big organics. I really like them. The customer service has been great. And so is gardens alive from Indiana, and then didn't confide over insectaries is also pretty good so there's, these are some of the good ones that we have tried repeatedly. Now when you order these products don't order them on a weekend, because they ship overnight. And if you order on a Saturday they may ship it and then the mail sits in a post office or somewhere, and they may die in shipment. So try to schedule your, your beneficial insects on a weekday, so that you can get it overnight, and you can you can actually have them stagger your supply. You can, you can schedule that. And then release the beneficial insects when insect populations are low don't wait. If you already have an outbreak. These insects won't be very helpful in an outbreak situation they prevent outbreaks. And then you can release stagger release them over time, and then store the store some of the excess and follow the directions if you can, if you find directions some of these companies do a great job I think their website services are sometimes better than some of the academic academic websites truly for details. So follow them talk to the technicians at the companies and get good products. So just again to show you how these products are packaged. I have been really impressed with how they become packaged. So if you're interested to learn more just let me know, I will be glad to talk to you. And store them. Once they come in boxes store them in your in your refrigerator don't freeze them to death, but you can store them, or keep them at room temperature away from direct sunlight. Make sure the food that's there has moisture in it. So put some water to keep these insects alive. But yeah, it's, they do a really good job of packaging. Again to show you some of these. There's a mini bug destroyer that we found one time that was really impressive, very aggressive predators. And the other thing is do a quality check. So when you get these products look at the box look at the insects and see if they're alive. If you see any problems for example, I had a shipment of green less lay swings that were dead. Just call them and let them know they actually happily these companies will happily replace you, provide you another replacement products. So just make sure that these, these come in a good way and good condition for you. And don't expect miracles as I always say that you know these beneficial insects only work the way you know the way the right way when you put them in the right way. Always remember to put them close to where you want the action. Don't put them half a mile away and expect miracles here. Keep them where you want the action, and then follow the instructions, keep them away from from sunlight this is some pictures of farmers actually doing it in high tunnels and also open field. And they're really effective when you are putting them close to where you want the target insects. Keep records. I always say keep records. I've met some great very innovative greenhouse producers who keep records and they have actually taught me a lot of what works what not and reduce your insecticide use definitely when you're using beneficial insects like these. If you want more information we have a number of these funny humorous videos that you can watch in a short time, less than two minutes and you can know some of these, and is this one on on predatory insects, and you can access it through the farming basics phone apps so don't forget you if you're a visual person like me, watch them on your own time. This is the phone app. Lots of good features the most popular feature I'll tell you is the call the regional extension agent function in the app so use it. That's, that's the most popular and the best way to find your regional extension agent close to you. The most recent addition to this is the podcast, we also have the farming basics podcast that Olivia Fuller and Jacob Kelly. And it's, it's very great. Caitlin has been a co host on that as well. And there's a number of tools that you can use. So this was my last slide and I'm going to stop to see if there is any questions you now you know my favorite ones this is not end of the world. There are so many different species you can use.