www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/23/how-make-bug-hotel-insect-decline-bees/
Your yard can help avert the insect apocalypse. Here’s how
📰 articleRight? I see this mentality from people too that's like "oh we have to save the butterflies, but I HATE wasps!" They're both pollinators, they're both important, and they both die if you spray poison.
My spouse (who does not work for a bug killing company) had an unfortunately interaction with a woman who wanted her milkweed sprayed for caterpillars......
We get someone every few weeks who starts their pitch with “we can get rid of all the spiders in your yard”. Yeah first thing you do is eliminate the competition.
I’m just about speechless when they come to the door. I regret one, young kid, I might have been able to reach him. But it’s like “Hey how’d you like to pay us to kill most of your wildlife and as a bonus leave a persistent nerve agent to help kick-start some cancer for you.”
I recently had our house sprayed to stave off a Brown Recluse insurgency. Did I fuck up?
Man a dude in basic got bitten by one and his hand swole up like a balloon. I won’t pretend I’d want them in the house. But buy something OMRI approved if you don’t want to poison yourself too. I’d leave the windows open as much as possible, you should anyway. Personally I use the stick vac for unwanted visitors.
Look man, spiders give me the heebie jeebies for sure (except jumpers, they're really adorable). But I have several large indoor roommates now, and those that can't obey the rules get a pass to live in the garden/yard/garage.
A strong ecosystem is made with strong predators.
That sounds bad out of context.
I had a mud dauber build a nest by my front door last summer. Left it up. Now I can point at it and tell the spider sprayers that the mud daubers do that for free.
(For anyone who doesn’t know, mud dauber wasps prey on spiders. They’re also incredibly nonaggressive to humans.)
I need some of those.
OMG those people came by my house. He looked SO confused when I told him the spiders are my friends so why would I kill them? (Also I live on ACRES by an actual bayou.)
It’s bad enough the city sprays constantly for mosquitoes. I guess at least they do it at 2AM now. Sigh.
Some people are just clueless, I had a friend whose aunt planted milkweed for the monarchs but kept killing the caterpillars because they were eating it with the thought being there’d be nothing left for the butterflies! It blew her mind when my friend explained that she was actually killing her chances of seeing any butterflies. She felt awful.
this is really very very silly! so curious where she thought butterflies came from...
"From mother nature" or some other true but broad answer that doesn't tell anything.
The school system is a complete failure if people are making it to adulthood not realizing that butterflies start their lives as caterpillars!
Not only that, but many species of pollinating wasps are also predatory (i.e. beneficial) insects that help control pests in your garden.
I’m fine with everyone except the carpenter ants that have tried to eat our entire house and the yellow jackets that insist on finding a way into our house every year…
Bro you got a water leak in your house somewhere
What do you mean? The yellow jackets come in through a really high up window and the carpenter ants were coming in through a separate window where a tree was too close to the house. The carpenter ants stopped being a problem but the yellow jackets love to stick a nest right outside the high window every year and then worm their way in.
Not everyone should be growing milkweed https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTL49MGxH/
I had a horrible flea infestation in my backyard and natural remedies were not fixing it. What do you suggest?
thats different than spraying for the sake of 'ew bugs'. pests are pests.
I’d really like a different workaround but I tried natural solutions and it was getting out of hand. Like as soon as I stepped on the grass, 10 would jump on my feet and legs. They were getting tracked by my dog into the house (who is on flea meds but they still make him itchy) and starting to get out of control.
Thats still kind of part of what people are saying though - a yard that wasnt just grass and lil maintained flower beds might naturally attract predators like frogs etc that would prevent fleas from getting embedded in the grass and leaves of the otherwise sterile environment in the first place.
But that's kinda the territory of prevention before infestation, where as you're already dealing with infestation.
Would setting out a bunch of bird feeders/attracting more birds to the yard be an option? Might at least passively remove fleas. Also rake often because you need to get rid of the environment they're breeding in right now, which will be the humid pockets in the yard like hidey-holes under leaves and so on.
Kinda unconventional but you could always see if a farmer would rent out chicken / guinea fowl etc, birds like chicken make fast work of ground bugs of all kinds, though you'd have to find a way to contain them lol
Even with insecticide you'd likely have to do multiple treatments, you really don't get rid of an infestation in a single pass.
It was in the middle of our raised planters that had veggies and some companion flowers
I briefly remember seeing some kind of nematode that you can spray, that consumes fleas. It’s more or a preventative though.
Out of curiosity, what were the fleas surviving on? I had thought they needed a host to survive.
Great question. They’re just all in the grass so I’m not sure. There are some raccoons and possums that live nearby as well as feral cats so maybe that.
We had a mild outbreak in our yard- maybe wouldnt have realized it right away, but a family member has a flea allergy.
We poured a perimeter of diatomaceous earth around the house and dumped very fresh (chip drop) eucalyptus mulch thick on top since fleas dont like the oils. Allergic reactions have ceased. Havent seen a single flea in the house or on us.
We’ll try eucalyptus next time if they’re still an issue
I haven’t had a flea issue personally but I hear yarrow is also a flea repelling plant.
Such a clever method. Dehydrate them and repel them away.
This will sound crazy, and of course the possibility exists that one has nothing to do with the other, but when I started keeping ducks not only did the slugs and ticks disappear, but the fleas did too. Had dogs until recently, still have an indoor cat, haven’t seen a flea in ten years. Still have feral cats, and wildlife including foxes passing through, and no fleas.
We’re gonna have chickens eventually which I heard also eats fleas
Did you try food grade diatomaceous earth?
Yes several times
Hello! I looked through the replies and didn't see this yet, but maybe you've tried it -
I believe you can purchase and release ladybugs which help with fleas, aphids, etc. You might need to plant some plants they like to get them to hang out with you, even if it's in pots it should work :)
Please do not buy ladybugs. They are removed from the wild to be sold in stores. You can easily attract them with a few native grasses in pots and small dinner plate-shaped flowering plants like yarrow, cilantro and parsley let go to seed. Just don’t kill the eggs and nymphs (orange and black alligators) on accident!
We’ve released lady bugs twice. They helped a little with aphids and spider mites but not so much fleas
Ya know….i was just thinking… I have never tried this for fleas,….but solarization with a clear plastic sheet nukes everything a foot down. I have to help my neighbors using this method for weeds all the time. It seems that the flees like the nice moist environment of your grass with all of it hiding and breeding opportunities. Would you be okay with killing your grass? (not sure how much you’ve invested in a lawn) If I had this issue, I would solarize the infested area with clear construction plastic for like a month! It should work okay between raised beds, too. Thoughts?
I’d mulch the whole backyard
YES! This is what we do AFTER killing all the weeds with solarization. Works beautifully unless there’s a mystery hose leak that goes undetected for an entire summer. Free wood chips from the local tree murderers… I mean trimmers.
Yeah, we just had 40 yards dumped on our driveway after 8-9 weeks after a chip drop request
Biodiversity solves all infestations ... in time.
Biodiversity is the end all be all, introduce predators. Easy google, this is all the DYI spirit is
I hate the idea of using insecticides in my yard. We've always had an incredible diversity of insect and bird species here, and I don't want to lose that. But when the ecosystem gets out of balance and one noxious species starts outcompeting everything else, it's hard to know what else to do.
For example, my yard periodically gets overtaken by black widows. The same habitat that encourages so much diversity also allows the widows to thrive and multiply, to the point that they become a safety hazard to humans & pets. They kill beneficial insects, too (they even wiped out our praying mantis population). I'd always remove and destroy all the webs, egg sacs, and widows I could find, but it wasn't enough. So eventually I started spraying spider poison too. I feel guilty about it, because I know it's probably hurting a lot of other spider species as well. But I have to protect my family, so what choice do I have?
In contrast, I avoided spraying anything to deal with last summer's plague of grasshoppers, and it was months of hell. I put up netting, built traps, spent hours every week catching them by hand. They still killed half the plants in my yard before I was able to make a dent in their numbers, and only the fall frost actually killed them off. This year I'm seeding my yard with praying mantis egg cases, in the hopes they will mature fast enough to deal with the flood of grasshopper hatchlings that I know are coming. But if that doesn't work, I honestly don't know what I will do.
Do you have any bird feeders / baths that might keep birds visiting the yard constantly and murdering the grasshopper en-masse? Stuff like that can be good passive defenses to some of those bugs.
I used to put up bird feeders, but my neighbor likes to feed stray cats and they started coming into my yard to hunt. The cat population has gone down a bit since they did a mass TNR operation, but until I can catproof my yard a bit more (new fence etc), I don't want to risk attracting birds to their doom.
Don’t keep bird feeders right now, they spread bird flu.
If you can find a way to encourage mud dauber wasps, they’re very nonaggressive to humans (pretty much will only sting if you actively attack them or they get caught in your clothing, even knocking down their nests they generally just leave), and they prey on spiders. Black widows are their favorite. I used to have widows… then the mud daubers moved in. No more widows.
Im struggling hard with ants. I’m beginning to think my house is on top of a very large ant hill. Last year we did poison and diatomaceous earth and only the cold weather made them subside. Now they’re back in full force, god forbid some water hits my counter. I’m contemplating on spraying for them this year.
The thing that solved my ant problem was boric acid baits. Mix laundry borax with sugar and peanut butter, make little balls, and put them where the ants will get them but not pets. Targets ants effectively without splash damage on all the other insect species in the area.
We just bought some borax bait traps this year, I’m glad to see someone suggesting it here because I really hope they work. My big trees are suffering and one might have to come down because of the carpenter ants.
Praying mantises kill more good bugs than any other predator. They are EVIL! Especially if invasive or not native. They even eat humming birds, bees, butterflies, and moths. BIRDS! You need to attract BIRDS! Please do not buy praying mantises. We kill black widows that have become a problem with a blow torch. It’s fun to go out hunting at night with the torch! But we leave the ones that aren’t near or in the house to do there duty in the yard. Keep the native good bugs!
Don’t buy mantises, and don’t encourage invasive mantises either, but native mantis species are as much a part of the ecosystem as any other insect.
Yes, native mantises should be part of any healthy garden. I shoulda added that. Thank you. However, I have a curated native bee habitat with many different species thriving there. Since the time I saw an adult one munching a bee, they get picked up, (we say “hi”) and gently blown over the wall and into my neighbors’ yards. I even let them ploop their egg sacks on walls and posts, undisturbed. ❤️and, anyways, like, can the average gardener tell who is native and who isn’t? Now, …how to get rid of the cats….???
I just wish there was something I could do that would decimate the ticks. We’re in Lyme Heaven with the tree line to a forest literally in our backyard.
I’m working on my proposal to my spouse for getting chickens. My PowerPoint is looking 🔥 but idk, it’s a hard uphill battle
100% ... just note that any pesticide, including herbicides, is poisonous to wildlife.
I’m guessing a lot of y’all are in these subs, but r/nativeplantgardening and r/nolawns are good ones to sub to.
If you’re in North America, the wild ones garden designs are a great resource for landscaping with native plants: https://nativegardendesigns.wildones.org/designs/
And the NWF keystone plant data is helpful for knowing which plants are most important to include in your yard: https://www.nwf.org/Garden-for-Wildlife/About/Native-Plants/keystone-plants-by-ecoregion
Cool resources. I'm still trying to figure out how to start.
THANK YOU
I've been doing a bunch of research and writing on this lately, here are some of my favorite resources:
- Nesting & Overwintering Habitat | A great writeup by the Xerces Society on how to create shelter and homes for native insects and pollinators. Natural habitats are generally more resilient than man-made versions (like the bee hotels pictured in this article), and they're easier/cheaper to make as well.
- Keystone Plants by Ecoregion | Keystone plants are species/genera which support a huge variety of native insects and pollinators (I believe this concept was originated by entomologist Doug Tallamy). These lists by the NWF show you which keystone species are native to your ecoregion.
Some of the best plant genera for pollinators are native sunflowers (Helianthus), goldenrod (Solidago), aster (Symphyotrichum), tickseed (Coreopsis), and black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia). These are all super-hardy plants that thrive on neglect and can be adapted to a wide range of climates and growing conditions. Plus they're beautiful!
“The best part? The laziest gardeners make the best bug architects.” 😁🥇
I love it when you call me an architect
🫶
My raspberry patch is alive with bees at the moment. The buzzing is so loud you'd think you were standing right beside a hive. Last year and this year I offered some of the potted suckers to neighbours but 'they don't have space'... their garden is the exact same size as mine but the previous occupants concreted over most of it.
SLEDGEHAMMER PARTY!!!
What do they mean by trying to pinpoint why it’s happening? As if we don’t really know. Capitalism has made it clear that you can do WHATEVER you want so long as you are profiting. Which has equated to the rape and destruction of planet. All in the name of solving manmade problems because profit. We spend too much time and resources on the wrong things. We could have a much stronger understanding of our world if we actually valued that understanding.
While I agree, please don’t let capitalism stop you from taking whatever small action you can.
Already do. I just wish the media would stop glossing over the real issues. Everyone SHOULD observe some level of permaculture but we wouldn’t NEED everyone to observe it if we didn’t have such a completely fucked relationship with farming and land use in general.
Well said!
Not all of us are socialists. And not all problems need to be reduced to "capitalism is evil".
A lot of them can be reduced to corporate greed, though. And they are usually the most impactful. Corporate lobbying to retract consumer-protecting regulation is directly responsible for many too-little too-late problems. Like the 2007 crash. Thanks Reagan.
2007 crash, eh? This thread was supposed to be about bees.
Americans need to stop parroting Cold War thought processes like “sOcIaLiSm iS bAd”. Do you think Fascism is bad? Because that seems to be up a whole lot of peoples alleyway these days.
I just think it's off-topic for this sub and this thread. People have to be reminded every now and then that not everyone thinks the same way they do.
You have a weird way of spelling off-topic.
True, but capitalism is the primary reason for this problem, and a lot of other problems.
You also have the industrial revolution, the green revolution, and a population explosion. But you can blame capitalism for everything if you want.
Not sure what your point is. Do you think those were caused by capitalism or something?
No. I'm saying that not everything is about capitalism. You have to understand the world in different ways. Saying it's all really about capitalism is extremely reductive.
I don't think capitalism actually explains anything the way you guys think it does. You're blaming a lot of things on capitalism which isn't really about capitalism. Is it the fault of capitalism that there are 8 billion people on this planet? Is it capitalism's fault that we demand a high standard of living, and that we have the means of exploiting resources to meet this demand? It's just very one-dimensional thinking.
It's not one-dimensional necessarily, but capitalism has driven so much of the toxic aspects of humanity. It rightly deserves a lot of the blame.
Dismissing the degree to which capitalism influences everything is madness.
he doesn't like his world view being challenged
Starvation, freezing to death, and malaria are man made problems? Huh, TIL
One could argue that starvation and freezing to death could be. Given the standard of living of the ultra wealthy, why do those problems still exist?
Ah yeah, I forgot a larger portion of the population is now starving and freezing to death post capitalism (/s because I assume it may be required)
Also, no, one couldn’t argue that. Some people having more prosperity does not cause others to have less prosperity. It would be good if the ultra wealthy did more to fight poverty. But simply having a high standard of living does not cause others to have a lower one.
This isn’t about whose more wealthy and has access to healthcare. It’s about us systematically destroying ecosystem after ecosystem so that 1% of the population can live the rest of their lives completely disconnected from nature and humanity. Their minds infected and rotten with greed. And now we are actively walking into a fascist future to protect THAT. For all they care you are literally no different than the skinniest, malaria infected child.
Which country is destroying the most ecosystems?
Missing the point by a mile, genius,
It’s relevant if you’ll put even a small amount of effort towards thinking about it. Remember, we’re discussing capitalism. Please explain to the class which country is most harmful to the highest number of ecosystems
You’re the one with a point to make so make it coy boy
It’s china. And since we’re discussing the claim that capitalism bad because it destroys ecosystems, please remind everyone whether china is a capitalist economy. (Spoiler alert, they’re not).
In fact, the only countries I’m aware of that have an expressed interest in restoring ecosystems are capitalist ones
The US exports its environmental destruction
Neither of us will change the other's mind. Agree to disagree. I do not wish to continue the argument.
Thank you! I need to make a reminder not to trim down my wildflower and raspberry stalks in the fall.
Several households in my neighborhood have bees and folks around those households know better than to spray for insects. The key is the beekeepers share honey with the neighbors.
I'm currently trying to explain to people in my area why invasive insects are bad. They think those bugs deserve a chance at life. Great Lakes region and insect is Chinese Praying Mantis.
From a quick Google search it doesn't seem like there is good evidence that the Chinese Praying Mantis is invasive. Usually when they identify a species as invasive, they will point to the harm it is doing to the ecosystem.
Yeah, it says:
The Chinese mantid is a common non-native species that is considered by some to be an exotic, invasive species.
Invasive species have an ecological impact that you can point to, that's why you're having a hard time convincing people. That's how I would convince someone, by describing the impact. That's what convinced me about invasive species in the first place, because their impact was undeniable.
Elsewhere it seems that the reason why they haven't officially declared them invasive is that they are already here in large numbers, so if they were causing problems we would notice it. But it could be that we just need more research and they will be declared invasive in the future.
I read that as well, however, you do have to read past the first line though. To get to the part where they are a nuisance pest that destroys local fauna, because they are an ambush predator of opportunity.
I read the whole thing. They can be nuisance and a pest without being invasive. I think most mantises are ambush predators of opportunity. Invasiveness is about the impact a species has on the ecology, not about specific characteristics of the species. It seems that they were introduced into the United States as a form of pest control but the Wikipedia article on mantises says that mantises in general have negligible value as a pest control. This is because they don't rapidly increase in numbers as the prey species increases, and that they aren't selective in their prey.
All this said, I would much prefer the native mantis than the Chinese mantis.
Yes!!! I love actually being engaged in native ecosystems
We must reform agriculture; depending on poisons is extremely foolish, and no yard protections can truly solve the issue of the biodiversity collapse.
Mass extinction of Earth's wildlife is closer than we think - study
Where.... where is the article? Am I missing something? Does it really end with thinking all bees live in hives/ human climbing a tree, or is there something else I need to click to get to the meat of this?
Something should’ve popped up prompting you to sign in to read the rest of the article. I am a Washington Post subscriber; see if this link takes you to the full article https://wapo.st/3UzJf03
Here in Spain every summer, while I'm on the beach waiting on the towel (I don't like much seawater) I occupy myself with cutting wild canes, making cordage from its leaves and tying bundles of hollow canes.
Then, when I'm going to gather all my family's things and return home, I hang the bundles in between the wild grasses that grow there.
Last summer I kept one for my apartment's terrace (I grow some herbs), and this spring I've seen bees emerging from all the tubes.
Happy cakeday!
Paywalled
"you can help save the world, read how after giving us money"
This really is a big part of the problem
the insects or paywalls? or general indifference to an unforgiving existence we control very little of due to the foolish way we've structured our society
I meant paywalls, but def all the above
Op posted an archived version for folks behind the pay wall https://archive.is/iGzAR
Thank you.
2 missing replies
Well for one stop spraying your yard with insecticide.