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What Insects Help Farmers?

Insects are often erroneously considered nothing but pests. While there are destructive insects such as locusts, more than 95 percent of insects are beneficial, performing important tasks for farmers such as pollinating crops and eating pests. Without insects, plants would die from disease or stop bearing fruit and farms would fail.

Ladybugs
- Valuable crops such as potatoes, cotton and almonds are often killed by tiny insects called aphids. Insecticides can control aphids. However, insecticides are expensive, damage crops and kill both beneficial insects and pests. Instead, many farmers control aphids by introducing ladybugs to their fields.The majority of ladybug species are predatory and feed on aphids and other pests.
Mantids
- The praying mantis is a deadly predator.
  
  The 1,800 members of the mantid species, sometimes called praying mantises, are predatory insects with long, spiny arms for grasping prey. Voracious eaters, praying mantises hunt insects and other invertebrates, other mantises and even very small frogs. However, they are indiscriminate killers that go after pests and beneficial insects alike.
Bees
- Bees pollinate many valuable crops.
  
  Various species of bees benefit farmers by pollinating crops. Some plants such as clover and orchids are dependent on specific species. In the 1980s, problems including overuse of insecticides and parasitic mites began killing off bee populations, forcing farmers to rent bees for pollination. In 2006, the mysterious "colony collapse disorder" left many commercial honeybee hives completely empty.
Wasps
- Many wasps feed by hunting insect pests.
  
  Wasps are winged insects resembling bees. However, unlike bees, wasps are carnivorous predators that feed on grubs, adult insects and spiders. Some wasps are social creatures living in vast colonies. Adult social wasps subsist on sap and nectar. However, they feed their young pre-chewed animal protein. Solitary wasps such as cicada killers, tarantula hawks and mud-daubers lay an egg on a paralyzed prey animal. When the egg hatches, the larva feeds on the prey. Parasitic wasps lay their eggs in the nests of other species of wasps, plants or even in the larvae of other insects.

Insects & Science