Will Rogers, one of the greatest political wits in pre-World War America, once said that he never met a man he didn't like - I was amazed when I heard that. Really, Will? Have you met some of the rude, mean-spirited people I've run across?
But as I get older, I'm beginning to see his point of view - people, animals and bugs (or insects to be correct), all have a role to play in our natural world. Even those miserable mosquitoes that terrorize us fair-skinned folks - they feed our lovely birds!
Of course, I've never personally met a termite or an Africanized bee so I guess I really can't suggest that I'd love every insect I met (sorry, Will).
But for years now, I've heard people say that the "bees" frighten them at picnics or in their backyard. They are pleased to hear that pesticides have killed vast amounts of them. But they're actually plagued by yellow jackets in the summer - the yellow and black bandits who want to steal your hamburger as summer winds down (they need meat to get their colony through the winter). Bees (honey bees, bumble bees, mason bees, leaf-cutting bees...) are one of the essential pollinating insects in our world. The USDA calculates bees are one of the pollinators helping to grow 1/3 of all US agriculture by transferring pollen from plant to plant. Name a food you like and a bee (or another flying insect) probably helped get it to your table.
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| A bee on a carrot flower |
Okay, you may say, what about those ugly earwigs? They scuttle around in the dark discarded refuse of the yard, showing up unexpectedly when you bring a bouquet into the house. As unpleasantly surprising as they are (imagine how upset they must be to see you), they're also important in our world - they're one of nature's composters, along with worms - plus, they love to eat aphids! With a little management, you can direct them away from the stems of the new veggie plants and toward the decomposing leaves.
Did you know that some insects are zombies? Well, not really the zombies of Hollywood, but the parasitoid insects lay their eggs inside (INSIDE) the bodies of other insects. And when the eggs hatch.....ewww. Remind you of a movie series from the 1980s? Cool, right?
All these lovely insects are allowing us to live in their world (a rough estimate: 10 quintillion - that's a 1 with 19 zeros) so we should figure out how to get along, shouldn't we? Can we really expect to kill them all? What would we do without our birds, butterflies and sweet little lady bugs?
Check out this fascinating publication about Beneficial Insects:
https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/sites/catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/files/project/pdf/pnw550.pdf
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