Applying Lacewing Honeycomb or Larva Units

Green Lacewing Larvae in honeycomb units: This is the solution for lacewing larvae spot releases in trees, vines and bushes.

To make pre-hatched larvae easier to release in trees and vines, you can cut narrow strips of honeycomb (or verticel) honeycomb easy to cut into any size for spot releases. Just cut the honeycomb into about 1 inch strips, peel off the organdy net cover, snip the strip into the size units for each release spot, and hang the units with twist ties or rubber bands.Larvae will walk out of the paper honeycomb, out-running other predators better than larvae just out of the egg. They disperse through the tree or vine, voracious in their search of insects, mites and their eggs. Lacewing then pupate under leaves. The adults will continue to inhabit the farm or landscape that provides the pollen or nectar that the adults need to lay eggs. Reasons why pre-hatched and pre-fed larvae are the best form of green lacewing for pest hot spots:

• unlike adult predators, they cannot fly away• they can walk as far as 7 miles looking for pests and pest eggs• unlike larvae just out of the egg, pre-hatched larvae are big and strong enough to live a few days and walk a mile or more to find food (depending on the temperature)• unlike putting out lacewing eggs, the pre-hatched larvae are more able to fend off other predators and survive bad weather

• pre-hatched larvae are hungrier and eat more pests in one area without resting or moving on.

The elegant green lacewing is a general predator and will consume many soft bodied insects and their eggs, including mites and pest thrips. Lacewing is the most economical commercially available general predator for many different pest situations. Releasing lacewing eggs is easily done using lacewing egg cards.

Lacewing eggs are placed into honeycomb units - paper honeycombs - like a 1/2 thick slice of cardboard. Organdy material covers both sides. Food (non-viable Sitotroga grain moth eggs).

They are available with 400 larvae per honeycomb.

The honeycombs can be cut into smaller pieces for distribution. Use razor blade or sharp utility knife to cut the honeycomb into small pieces. A 1.25 inch square contains about 20 larvae. Place the pieces into a paper bag or other container to carry into the field. Once in the field next to a plant, pull the organdy material from one side of the honeycomb. Use a rubber band or twist tie to attach the honeycomb to a plant. Another way to release them is to walk to an infested plant, pull the organdy back a short distance to expose a few cells, turn the honeycomb upside down and tap the larvae out. Or use a small brush to flick one lacewing at a time onto a plant.

Place as high in the plant as you can comfortably reach.

More Approaches for Releasing Lacewing for Orchards, Vineyards, and Landscaping

Hot Spots: Pest outbreaks often occur in "hot spots" or edges of orchards or landscapes. Heat or dust from a road, exposure to nearby infested plants, or drying winds may shift the ecological balance of predator and prey in your plantings. Treating the hot spot or edge often is all that is needed to control the outbreak. The extent, situation, and location of the infested area will determine the best application method for your needs. Lacewing Adults: As a rule there is no better method for getting lacewing into tall trees than to release as adults. Adults will start laying eggs in five days. By planning releases early, the eggs laid by released adults are perfectly placed near prey suitable for the larvae. This is a popular program for aphid control in street trees where they can be colonized. To keep the adults in your area, providing flowering plants with nectar is essential. Check lists of beneficial insect attracting plants that grow in your area. Corn is an excellent source of nectar (from extrafloral nectaries) and protection for lacewing adults. Adults require special handling for shipping. Pupae in honeycomb cardboard units can be purchased which will emerge in a few days for release as adults (the pupal stage is about five days). Aerial Lacewing Egg Release: Aerial releases of eggs and larvae by airplane and by remote control airplane have been used, the problem being that many fall to the ground. Some crop dusters have created equipment similar to pollen applicators with a venturi mechanism out of the airplane floor. Passes are made across field rows in the early morning. The preferred carrier for mass field releases may be rice hulls. In indoor plantings, tethered helium balloons have been used with a "toy" scoop carrying the lacewing eggs in a carrier such as vermiculite. A release lever for the scoop is controlled by a separate string.

Backpack Biocontrol Applicator Release: The Rincon-Vitova Backpack Biocontrol Applicator, produced by Maruyama Corporation, is a multipurpose machine for delivering dusts, granules and liquids, including cover crop seeds, fertilizers, biologicals and pesticides. Either dry or liquid products are dispensed from the same 3.4 gallon (12.9 liter) chemical tank with only minor modifications.

Rincon-Vitova’s Biocontrol Applicator for lacewing eggs and other organisms.

This backpack mister/duster has been modified, tested, and calibrated by Rincon-Vitova for delivering biocontrol agents such as lacewing eggs, Trichogramma pupae in sitotroga eggs, predatory mites, and beneficial nematodes. Biocontrol materials can be applied in swaths up to 20 feet wide while walking.

Specialized attachments and a sticker material are available to customize the Backpack Biocontrol Applicator for different jobs, making this a very versatile tool.

Maruyama Biocontrol Applicator Features:

• Air bubbler in the tank for organisms to live in liquid and keep them suspended

  Vent in tank lid to release tank pressure created by bubbler

  Normal walking movement keeps organisms in suspension

• Instructions, calibration and test data for bran, vermiculite and various sticker solutions

• Toll free 800 phone number technical support

Biosprayer Release: A spray rig with a PTO towed behind a tractor has been adapted for spraying on lacewing eggs. It has been used for large-scale releases but is not currently being manufactured.

Ants will fight off lacewing larvae from aphids they are protecting. Ants generally interfere with biological control, and in particular they will attack and drive lacewing larvae away from aphids, whitefly, mealybug, and soft scale. These honeydew secreting pests supply sweets to the ants. Put attention to controlling ants. The simplest thing you can do is to stick a shovel into ant mounds and disrupt the colony.

 Ant Bait Station

Hot Spots: Pest outbreaks often occur in "hot spots" or edges of orchards or landscapes. Heat or dust from a road, exposure to nearby infested plants, or drying winds may shift the ecological balance of predator and prey in your plantings. Treating the hot spot or edge often is all that is needed to control the outbreak. The extent, situation, and location of the infested area will determine the best application method for your needs.

Farming With Green Lacewing

Ideally, releases of beneficials are started as early in the season as possible, when the first pests enter your fields or neighboring crops. One of our most popular strategies is initially releasing small numbers of beneficials to colonize young plants, and following up with a series of weekly releases to insure long-term establishment of pest-destroying natural enemies. Farming ecologically with biological control inputs gets easier each year, as a reservoir of natural enemies becomes established. The insect ecology of each farm and season is unique, but some general guidelines are available from research.

VEGETABLE CROPS

Green lacewings go after aphids on vegetables first, but also attack thrips, spider mites, whiteflies, moth eggs, young caterpillars and other pests as aphids are cleaned up. Numbers of lacewings needed depend upon many factors, including pest numbers, temperature, other natural enemies, etc.Studies in Finland using Chrysoperla carnea against bean and green peach aphids on parsley achieved control with a predator:pest ratio of 1:27 (230 eggs/m2). On green pepper a higher ratio of predators was needed, whereas on greenhouse asparagus, 40 eggs/m2 controlled green peach aphid for three months. "During the spring-summer period, the initial ratio of predator to prey should be 1:15 on most fast-growing crops, but 1:50 on celery and dill, and during the autumn-winter period it should be 1:10 on spinach beet, 1:25 on celery and 1:30 on lettuce." Fall cabbages with waxy aphids require 1:1 for 74% control, and 1:25-50 for 50% control. In USDA studies (Nordlund), lacewing larvae placed on potato plants when Colorado potato beetle (CPB) eggs begin hatching prevents damage (potatoes without lacewings are defoliated). Buckthorn aphid on potato was reduced up to 96% and green peach aphid 83% with 34,000 lacewing per acre; potato aphids were not affected. In the Ukraine, 2-3 releases of C. carnea (50-60,000 per year) at 10-15 day intervals were 85-96% effective against CPB on potato. On eggplant, similar numbers of C. carnea larvae released 3-4 times at 7-10 day intervals at a 1:20 predator:pest ratio were effective. Other pests, such as thrips, are also stopped on potato, eggplant, tomato, and pepper.

Releasing lacewing in borders of early crops (e.g. wheat, barley, sorghum, corn, sunflower, alfalfa, oilseed Brassicas) results in large early season movement into later plantings of vegetables, soybeans, cotton etc. For example, lacewing releases in forage sorghum interplanted with cabbage increased lacewing eggs on cabbage 1,000%. Sunflower or corn borders planted 60 and 30 days ahead of tomatoes and inoculated with beneficials protect the tomatoes. Early inoculation yields more natural enemies than can be purchased to hold down whiteflies, fruitworms and other pests.

COTTON

Adjacent unsprayed grain and oilseed fields can supply 4-12 predators per cotton plant (predator:pest ratio of 1:65-73), completely control aphids, and then reduce moth eggs from 600 per 100 plants to where only 5 worms (caterpillars) survive per 100 plants. In a Soviet experiment, eggs and early instar C. carnea larvae were released three times at a 1:1 predator:pest ratio. A week after the first release, there were 98.5% fewer aphids, 95.6% fewer thrips, 100% less bollworm eggs and 50% fewer young bollworms. In fields without lacewing releases, aphid abundance increased 180%, thrips 160%, spider mites 240%, bollworm eggs 150%, and young bollworms 230%.

TREES & VINES

Green lacewings destroy pear psylla, thrips, spider mites, aphids, mealybugs, scale crawlers and eggs of caterpillars like the notorious codling moth in apples and pears. They are recommended for landscape trees by the Texas Department of Agriculture and used by parks and municipalities for street trees. In Indiana, green lacewings destroyed 20% of codling moth eggs on apples, something to consider with Rincon-Vitova's Trichogramma from codling moth. In Poland and China, releasing 1 first instar lacewing larva per 10-25 leaves greatly reduced and kept European red mite populations on apples very low. In a definitive 1940s U.S. study, 3 well-timed spring and summer releases of 250 C. carnea eggs in crowns of pear trees (27,000 eggs/acre each release) in alternate years controlled grape mealybug.

Green lacewings combat most vineyard pests, including leafhoppers. Best results are obtained by closely monitoring vineyards, and timing lacewing releases to coincide with emergence of each new pest generation, beginning in spring.

GREENHOUSES AND INTERIORS

Green lacewing larvae are very effective in dense foliage where pests are evenly distributed, and on low growing plants. In Kansas, releasing an average of 1 green lacewing larvae per snapdragon plant per week during 8 weeks controlled green peach aphid. Aphid control is a week faster at 75º F than at 70º F. Screens and artificial light extending total light to 12-14 hours may enhance winter reproduction. Sugar-yeast feeding stations show promise for keeping lacewings from disappearing from greenhouses, but periodic releases every 2-4 weeks are still recommended. The aphid midge, Aphidoletes aphidimyza, offers long-term, low-density aphid control after lacewings knock down high aphid populations.

COVER CROP REFUGE MANAGEMENT

Green lacewings are among the hundreds of beneficial predators commonly devouring agricultural pests along with brown lacewings, pirate bugs, big-eyed bugs, assassin bugs, damsel bugs, spined soldier beetles, lady beetles, Staphylinid rove beetles, Carabid ground beetles, Collops beetles, six-spotted thrips and mites (not to mention the parasitic wasps and flies). Slight changes in farming can nurture this natural enemy complex and avoid the pest flare-ups taken for granted under conventional chemical farming. Techniques of crop rotation, hedging, refuge management can make a difference.

Strip cutting (harvesting alternate strips or fields of alfalfa or cover crops when they begin to bloom), for example, forces a steady migration of beneficials into nearby row crops yielding many times the natural enemies of uniformly cut hay fields or cover crops. Strip or trap cover crops that are never sprayed offer a field insectary and off-season refuge for increasing beneficial insects without harm to market products. Parasites live several times longer and destroy more pests when there are weeds or other plants to provide nectar. In California almonds and peaches, for example, lacewing eggs are 100 times more abundant with cover crops than without. Integrated management of predators and parasites is the key.

Lacewing Conservation Tips: Minimum releases of larvae in borders of early blooming varieties of insectary refugia of grasses, corn, sunflower, legumes, oilseed Brassicas, or the California native perennials (Ceanothus, kurrajong bottletree, hollyleaf cherry and soapbark tree) results in large movements of adults into later varieties of trees, ornamentals and vegetables, Artificial pollen sprays and sticks also lure lacewing back into your plants.

Annual or reseeding borders of early grasses, sorghum, corn, sunflower, legumes or mustards (Brassicas) are good places for spring releases to yield large movements of adults into later plantings of vegetables, cotton or ornamentals. Hedgerow borders of perennials blooming various months of the year with large bunches of tiny inflorescences help feed adult lacewing and other beneficials. Ask about our habitat seed mixes, Beneficial Blend and Insecta-Flora in three mixes of different heights. Brush-type mulch under perennials shelters overwintering lacewing adults.Lacewing are nocturnal, but adults can be found feeding in blooms at dawn and dusk.