Do you hate it when the kids (or anyone really) doesn’t clean their plate? They leave behind a bean or a small bite of potato. Well how about those Ladybugs? They eat and eat aphids and then, when they are almost done their dinner, and their leaf is almost licked clean, they lay a few eggs and leave a few aphids behind for their young to eat.

If you’ve raised aphids in your garden you know there is nothing worse than one left behind. Aphids lay live young and before you know it the populations are going through the roof again and sticky sap is everywhere. So why do they do it? Brian Spencer, Applied Bionomics, says that ladybugs try to take care of their own young so they leave food (i.e. aphids) behind for the ladybug young to eat. The hatching larvae need something right away so the adults leave the leaf before they eat all the aphids.

Aphidoletes are found all over the world and they have a really distinctive red larval stage that cleans its plate- literally. They just keep on eating until every aphid is gone. The tiny black adult is a fly and it zooms out of the pupa and dashes over to the first hotspot of aphids it finds, laying eggs that hatch and become the gobbling red larvae. The eating carries on until all the aphids are gone. So if you see aphids look closely with a magnifying glass and if you see a red “worm” you have your hungry eater right there on your plate. Sit back and wait for the results.

Look at the tiny pinky-red lines near the mid-rib of the strawberry leaf at left. These are the hard working aphid eaters also known as aphidoletes. I released adult aphidoletes into my greenhouse to eat the aphids on my plants and they have done an amazing job!

Learn more about bugs that eat bugs. hire Donna Balzer as a speaker at your next event.