In various countries of the bug is called differently, but his name is always betrays a deep respect for the people to a small insect.In England it is called "lady beetle" in Ukraine - "sun", and in Russia, and by the way, in France, too - "Ladybug".Why cow?Probably because the bug when frightened, highlights from the joints feet hemolymph, whitish substance similar in appearance (but not the taste!) Of milk.And God called her because of the huge benefits that it brings to our orchards, vineyards and vegetable gardens.Have you ever wondered what to eat ladybugs?
Here it is slowly crawling on a blade of grass: red, as if painted half ball, with seven black dots on the wings ... Stop!In fact, the ladybugs all over the world there are about four and a half thousand species.And they are not only seven-spotted red and yellow and white, black, orange.They are found on every continent, where there is at least some vegetation.There meadow and field ladybug God, the one that lives in the trees, and even the one that likes to live on aquatic plants.But the food preferences of the whole vast kingdom "suns" almost identical - a soft insects.
course there are malicious "Sun", and regular ladybug on a hot summer day is not averse to quench their thirst, chewing juicy leaves.However, such damage can not be compared with the benefits that brings bug farmers.In order to trace than the ladybug eats, you need to arm a magnifying glass.Hard to believe that this cute bug - terrible and voracious predator, because he and the speed of movement is small, and capture tools, such as praying mantises have not.But the "sun" do not need this, because his production is still slow and completely defenseless.
The ladybugs eat?Their main diet - aphid and its larvae.Do not shrink from "sun" and scale insects, whiteflies, spider mites, small caterpillars, scale insects, herbivorous bugs and larvae of Colorado beetles.This insect evinces uncommon appetite: the day one adult beetle eats 150-200 300-400 aphids or larvae.This tireless predator can even dig into the ground to reach the aphids parasitic on the roots.For this quality - voracity and ability to seek prey - his love and experienced farmers.Previously, farmers who live in the foothills, sent at the end of winter in the mountains in search of wintering ladybugs, collected them in sacks, and when the sun prigreet, produced on their land.In Soviet bugs "sprayed" over the collective farm fields and vineyards, dropping them from planes maize.Unfortunately, this practice is forgotten, and pest control is carried out with the help of chemicals or GMOs.
The ladybugs eat in the winter?This migratory insect with the first night frosts begin migrating to the mountains.There it creeps into the cracks and crevices of the rocks.On their wintering flock so much that they cover rocks red pattern.Sometimes it accumulates in one place up to several million individuals.In close quarters, but not mad: the more cluttered the tiny bugs slit, the more chances to survive the fierce mountain cold.As soon as the sun begins to warm large stones, small "sun" awakened from hibernation and fly outside.A little overfed on a young grass, bugs lay their eggs far from the large colony of aphids to provide sustenance barely hatched offspring.The number of eggs depends on the mother's supply.The clutch is from two hundred to four hundred eggs.
After 5-8 days of them appear small larvae.The ladybugs eat in his childhood, which lasts about twenty days?First adjacent eggs, of which no one has hatched to stock up on nutrients up to the moment when the larva finds its main food - eggs, larvae or adult aphids.And in his search for the young "Sun" very patient and methodical - because they do not have wings as adults to fly to places with better food supply, and they tirelessly, meter by meter, inspect the space around them.
