HelpfulGardener.com

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o2ptiog69gzwp ... .23.18.jpg
Found this guy on on of my pepper plants yesterday. Since joining this forum I've become more aware of the need for accuracy so I looked him up. Not the greatest picture but I got a close look. I can't help but wonder how many of these I've mistaken these for BMSB larva. I'm trying to correct my thought process. In the past, I've been thinking a lot more about the things that harm my garden and not giving enough thought to those that help it. I have to change.

The picture is kind of blurry.

Technically it is not a ladybug larva, which look like little black & orange alligators:


https://kamiakcreek.files.wordpress.com ... marked.jpg


But it might be a ladybug pupa:


https://www.butterflyfunfacts.com/images ... paone6.jpg


absolutely you are right to pay more attention to the "Garden Patrol" as applestar always calls them and work on attracting more of them to your garden. Life as a gardener will get much easier, when you have ladybug larvae eating the aphids and braconid wasps parasitizing the tomato hornworms.

It looks kind of furry???? Could it be a type of bee?

I'm not basing my identification on the best blurry picture I could take but on observations made with a magnifying glass in my hand.

I have a plum tree that gets infested by sucking insects, which in turn draws ladybugs. Yesterday, I saw that the annual surge in the Ladybug squad of the Jr. Garden Patrol has started when I tried to move a water hose from under the plum tree and had to carefully remove three ladybug larvae off the hose first so as not to squish them. I put them in a windowbox in which I have lettuce and peas growing. Get to work!

The larvae have a pretty painful bite too. I'm in the habit if letting the grass against tree trunks go without being trimmed very often because that's a spot the lady bugs like to lay their eggs.

Lady bug eggs
https://butterflygardening.files.wordpre ... .jpg?w=587

pow wow wrote:The larvae have a pretty painful bite too. I'm in the habit if letting the grass against tree trunks go without being trimmed very often because that's a spot the lady bugs like to lay their eggs.

To late for me on the grass around tree trunks. It's the first summer of my retirement and I've been working harder than ever in the garden and cleaning up the yard. Not worried about bites from beneficials, I don't mess with them and they don't mess with me.