When it comes to Organic production, Lady Bugs provide excellent natural pest-management.
Aphids are a common pest to Blueberries. They reproduce rapidly and can also transmit a virus known as the blueberry shoestring virus to blueberry plants.
The best way to naturally control aphids is to introduce a lot of ladybugs, which dine on aphids.
Because of the extensive organically maintained gardens on our farm, we already had a large ladybug population established. We did not have to introduce ladybugs to our field - they naturally appeared.
Ladybugs can be seen on our field in three stages: larvae, pupae, and mature (beetle) form.
The larvae hatch and start looking for something to eat. They will start looking for tiny mites
or aphids right away and they should find plenty because the mother usually finds the perfect
leaf to lay her eggs under because of the abundance of food for the larvae
to find. Newborn larvae look sort of like tiny alligators.
After a couple of weeks of growing, the
larvae will start to change into something that looks like a shrimp. In the garden, they
will find a leaf to attach themselves to and it will seem to fall asleep for a
few days, but it is not sleeping at all. During the pupa stage, the larvae
are going through a metamorphosis into a ladybug. In our blueberry field, we often find the shrimp-like pupae on actual blueberries!
When the metamorphosis is complete, the
skin of the larvae will split open and the full grown ladybug will emerge,
but it still won’t look like the ladybug that you know so well. It will
look soft and pink or very pale for a couple of hours until its shell
becomes hard. As the shell hardens it also gains pigment, which causes the
ladybug to become bright red.
Life cycle information source: http://www.ladybug-life-cycle.com.
