8 Beneficial Bugs In Your Garden! 

Although there are plenty of insect pests and unwanted guests there’s tons of bugs that can help your garden thrive! We’ve put together a list of our top 8 bugs that benefit your garden:

Bees: The most commonly known beneficial bugs, given their capacity for pollinating flora and vegetable based plants.

Praying Mantis: This insect helps maintain the ecological balance required for sustainable and successful gardening. This species is often considered to be a perfect hunter, gobbling up all varieties of garden pests in its path, putting it at the top of the garden insect food chain.

Ladybugs: Part of the reason they are beneficial is that they eat quite a few of the bad bugs. Each ladybug can eat fifty to sixty aphids per day and over five thousand in a lifetime. In addition, they also like to munch on mealy worms, leafhoppers, and mites.

Spiders: It’s as simple as they eat insects – mostly the unwanted pests that you don’t want in your flower beds, like aphids, wasps, beetles, mosquitoes, and flies. They work hard, keeping those pesky populations in check before they can harm your favorite perennials or sting you.

Dragonflies: In addition to their aesthetic beauty, dragonflies serve your garden well as a predator of aphids, flies, midges, mosquitoes, and will even help you manage your wasp population should it get out of control.

Ground Beetles: As per their name, this species’ predatory work takes place down below in the soil. Ground beetles gobble up slugs, snails, cabbage maggots, and other creepy crawly pests that are known to ravage your garden. This beneficial bug also enjoys feasting on weed seeds which further protects your crops.

Butterflies: Butterflies are important pollinators. Approximately one-third of all plants need pollination to set fruit, and bees and butterflies are major pollinators. Flower nectar is the food for adult butterflies and by flying from flower to flower sipping nectar, pollination occurs.

Hoverflies: Adult hoverflies feed on flower nectar and help pollinate some crops, but it is the larvae that are important predators in the garden. The tiny, nearly invisible slug-like larvae scour the undersides of plant leaves for aphids, and eat them as their primary food source.