Category Archives: Beneficial bugs and Natural Enemies

Check out your garden, if you see any of these, high five!!! These are the good guys!! They need the bad guys in order to survive so don’t pray toxic pesticides or you will kill both the good guys and the bad guys and the bad guys will come back faster!

Biological control is the process of pest management by the use of living organisms that prey on or attack pests. Three important steps are generally required to improve the biological control of pests: Find out which natural enemies are present. Insect zoo To find out who is eating who or what, an “insect zoo” can be set up. […]

A key factor in protecting and conserving farmers’ friends is being able to tell friends from enemies. Various studies have shown that many farmers (and also many agricultural professionals) are not good at insect identification and know little about insect biology and behaviour. In vegetable pest management, if farmers cannot distinguish between pests and friends, […]

Credit:Infonet Natural systems support a wide range of plants and animals. The plants provide food for plant-eating animals such as antelopes and many insects. The plant-eating animals are themselves eaten by a wide range of predators. Plant-eating animals that feed on a crop that we value (for example aphids that feed on cabbage), are considered pests. […]

Types of natural enemies: Predators, parasitoids and pathogens Credit: Infonet/Dino Martins/Wam K Dennler Predators These are organisms that prey and feed on other organisms. They often feed on various stages of the host (pest): eggs, larvae, pupae and adult. Each predator kills and feed on a number of prey individuals during their development (larvae to adult). Most […]

Farmers can help to keep the balance in their favour in trying not to harm predatory arthropods such as ladybirds, spiders and hover fly larvae which feed on plant-eating pests such as aphids and caterpillars. Some of the ways to do this are: Use control pesticide products only when necessary and then not broad spectrum […]

Credit: Infonet Biovision / Wam K Dennler Natural Enemies are Farmers’ Friends. The natural enemies of plant pests are considered as farmers’ friends. Various beneficial organisms that can help the farmer to keep pests (and some diseases) under control and prevent them from causing economic damage. Areas of land which have not been cultivated or […]