Beneficial Insects: Not All Bugs are Bad

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Praying mantids are the single members of the beneficial insect family capable of looking over their shoulder.
Praying mantids are the single members of the beneficial insect family capable of looking over their shoulder.
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Tachinid flies consume many pests, including caterpillars and beetles.
Tachinid flies consume many pests, including caterpillars and beetles.
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Japanese beetles generally lay their eggs in lawns or pastures during the hot months.
Japanese beetles generally lay their eggs in lawns or pastures during the hot months.
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Ant Lions, found throughout the southern U.S., eat ants and other small insects.
Ant Lions, found throughout the southern U.S., eat ants and other small insects.
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Lacewing larvae are often called
Lacewing larvae are often called "aphid lions" because of their fondness for that infamous pest.
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One of the most versatile
One of the most versatile ""terminators,"" wasps are common throughout North America.

I have a confession to make. When I first moved from the city to a little New England hill farm a quarter-century ago, I found the old barn choked with spiderwebs. Walking into the long-unused milking parlor or up the stairs notched into a log and into the hay loft was a battle with one tough, sticky web after another. Old ones were matted together in dusty ropes. Each fresh one that splattered coldly against my face was filled with dead flies. And, up in the corner was a great, fat, hairy gray barn spider (technically: Araneus cavaticus ) measuring up to an inch-and-a-half from leg-tip to leg-tip. Yech! And they all seemed able to rebuild destroyed webs bigger than ever overnight.

Though fresh from the suburbs, I had enough Nature education to wait till the young barn swallows were fledged and gone from their half-cup–shaped mud nests stuck high on the barn rafters. Then I went to Sears and bought an insecticide fogger that fit the rotary lawn mower. I filled the reservoir with the all-purpose oil-based bug killer that came with it and plugged the liquid-to-smoke converter into the exhaust. That night, after the bats had taken flight from the roof peak, I started the machine and walked the length of the barn, filling the whole of it with a virulent white smog. From the next morning on, a brushed away web stayed gone.

Then I began taking on livestock. I put 50 newly fledged chicks into a pen I built on the back barn wall, then added cages of rabbits, a pair of dairy goats, and then a horse. With the animals came droppings and, as you’ve doubtless guessed, with the manure came flies–a buzzing, humming, swarming plague of them.

Unimpeded by the former spiderweb gauntlet, entire hatches of mosquitoes, blackflies, no-seeums, deerflies, and horseflies flew in from the pond and woods to seek blood–avian, animal, or human. Horn flies appeared in swarms and attacked horns and hoofs. Carrion flies, flesh flies, and screw flies teemed around moist animal eyes and noses. The air buzzed with bluebottles and green bottles, and little biting stable flies stabbed into my ankles as well as the animals: Blowflies and houseflies bred in the manure, and then tried to move into the house. An invasion was underway.

I used one spray on the manure piles and another for the animals and still another for the sunny side of the house where flies in their hundreds congregated each morning to warm up for the attack. Nothing seemed to have any effect–not even curtains of long, gummy fly strips that I bought by the box. So, I had to invest scarce funds in rolls of window screen that I stapled over every door and window in the house and barn. 1 helped some, but not much.

  • Published on Apr 1, 1995
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