Don't Kick the Anthill

Lysa TerKeurst

"The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways, but the folly of fools is deception." Proverbs 14:8 (NIV)

I stood at the dirt mound watching ants. They were busy. I was not.

The afternoon had been slow for me. Several of my friends had been invited to the community pool. Another friend was at camp for the week. Even my last resort, the pigtailed aggravation that lived in the apartment below, was busy. "She's napping," her mom had informed me.

I walked away thinking, She's six years old. Only two years younger than me and she still takes naps? That's the awfullest thing a mom could do to her child. And this is the awfullest afternoon ever.

Ant Safari

by Dennis Fisher

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Our Daily Bread Radio is hosted by Les Lamborn

Read: Proverbs 6:6-11

Go to the ant . . . . Consider her ways and be wise. —Proverbs 6:6

Bible in a Year:
Proverbs 4-7

In his book Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions,Mark Moffett reflects on his early childhood fascination with ants—an interest that didn’t die as he grew older. Moffett’s preoccupation led to his earning a doctorate at Harvard and then embarking on worldwide travel as an expert on the subject. His study has given him marvelous insights about these industrious creatures.

Long before Moffett discovered some of the wonders of the ant world, the Scriptures remarked on the ingenuity and work ethic of these tiny insects. Ants are held up by wise King Solomon as an example of industry for those who tend to be lazy: “Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which, having no captain . . . provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest” (Prov. 6:6-8).

Ants : You Can Almost Hear Their Tiny Voices Singing "Whistle While You Work"

Geekologie

What looks like a screen cap from a CGI-heavy Super Bowl commercial is actually a real, not-manipulated photograph. And no, those aren't posed ant corpses with a bottle cap hot glued to their tiny hands, if that's what you think, Professor Coldheart. It's from a series of images that photographer Andrey Pavlov took outside his house, after studying and then making an art project out of a real live ant colony. He's a former set designer, which allowed him to make some pretty incredible sets for the ants to interact with in the most stereotypically industrious ways possible.

Telegraph.co.uk
Seen here, reeling in a 300-pound marlin.

Seeing ants get things done at this scale is inspiring, but if you're anything like us, that sensation quickly turns to a sense of foreboding for the day when they finally decide to rise up and take humanity down.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19817_18-images-you-wont-believe-arent-photoshopped-part-9.html

Beneficial insects: How to attract good bugs to your garden

Suggestions include choosing a diverse variety of plants and letting some vegetables go to seed.

by Tom Oder

 

Small yarrow flowers can attract tiny parasitoid wasps, which feed on harmful aphids, caterpillars and beetle larvae.  (Photo: nayukim/Flickr) 

Not all bugs are bad, and knowing which is friend and which is foe may be more important than ever to gardeners this year.

 

That’s because entomologists are anticipating an increased number of insects this spring and summer due to what the National Weather Service says is the fourth mildest winter on record.

 

“A proportion of overwintering larvae, pupae, eggs, etc., get knocked back in winter, and the more severe the winter the greater the proportion that does not make it through,” said Jim Costa, director of the Highlands (North Carolina) Biological Station and professor of biology at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee. “I figure that we'll have a good spring emergence of insects as a result — the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

 

Which are good, which are bad?

While all insects might be ugly to many homeowners, knowing which are good and which are bad and attracting the good guys to eat the bad guys can be critical first steps to gardeners trying to grow that prize-winning rose or unblemished tomato.

 

Allison Mia Starcher, a garden illustrator and author, taught herself the difference when she was drawing illustrations of beneficial insects for the Southern California Gardener newsletter. She shared what she learned in an easy-to-understand book she wrote and illustrated, “Good Bugs for Your Garden” (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1995).

 

Speaking recently during a drizzling rain in the garden at the Santa Monica, Calif., house that used to belong to her maternal grandparents and where she now lives, Starcher said there are two ways for backyard gardeners to tell good bugs from bad ones: observation and Internet searches.

 

Pausing for a moment to marvel at parasitic wasps drawn to the pollen on flowers of mustard greens, Starcher said gardeners should “watch the bugs on their plants and see what they are doing.” This is a process she calls micro-level gardening and one from which she says she gets a satisfaction that cannot be overstated.

 

Eating or defending

To help distinguish between harmful and beneficial insects, Starcher said, gardeners should ask themselves which bugs are eating their garden and which ones are defending it.”  Think, too, she urged, about what kind of damage is being done. Are holes being chewed in leaves?  And when is the damage happening – for example, are the insects active at night?

 

If you see the bug, Starcher says to take a photo of it and write a short description. As an example, she suggested something as simple as “shield-shaped with red markings.

 

Armed with a photo, a description of the bug and its activity, Starcher said Web searches will often lead to bug ID sites. “I’m a real believer in asking questions and doing an Internet search,” she added.

 

“You can even do this on Facebook,” she pointed out. Perhaps your gardening friends can ID a bug or forward the information to someone who can.

 

More ways to ID

Other ways to ID bugs are to email a photo and description of characteristics to your local cooperative extension service. Better yet, Starcher advises, capture the critter and take it in a sealed baggie to a garden center. Once there, ask the staff for help in determining whether it’s beneficial or harmful.

 

The goal, she said, is to figure out which ones are the good ones … and don’t kill them.

 

To attract good bugs to the garden, Starcher and Costa offered several suggestions:

 

• Make your garden as diverse as possible. The different nectars and pollen will attract a variety of insects. A byproduct of a richness of diverse plants and insects is that they in turn will create a healthy backyard ecosystem that will benefit birds, small mammals, reptiles and amphibians.
• Use specific plants to attract specific insects. To attract zebra swallowtail butterflies, for example, plant paw paw trees, the only host plant for this species of butterfly.
• Leave an occasional, dreaded weed undisturbed. Weeds add to the diversity of plants and thus increase the variety of insects in the garden.
• Let vegetables, greens and herbs go to seed when possible. This is easy to do by peeling leaves from stems of plants such as arugula, basil and chard and leaving the stem to continue to grow and flower, attracting insects when it does.
• Include plants whose flowers have an umbrella shape. Umbrella-shaped flowers have clusters of very small flowers and are accessible to tiny parasitoid wasps, which feed on harmful aphids, caterpillars and beetle larvae. The yarrow flower is an example.
• Go native in the ornamental garden. Native plants are especially proficient at attracting pollinators and blooming when the pollinators are active.
• Plant in vertical layers. Place plants such as alyssum and catmint under roses to attract beneficial insects such as ladybugs and lacewings. These beneficial insects consume pollen in their adult incarnations while their larvae eat pest insects. They are also efficient pollinators.
• Don’t fret about ants (except fire ants). They add to the mutualism of ecosystems, harvesting and dispersing seed and extending the life of plant populations.
• Rejoice in earthworms. While not an insect, they aerate and enhance soil.

 

If you can’t put enough good guys into your garden to combat the bad guys, there are organic pesticides as well as a variety of insecticidal soaps on the market that are safe for people and pets.

 

You can also engage in what Starcher calls hand-to-hand combat, squishing bugs with your fingers. “While we were talking,” she said during our call, “I squished a caterpillar Beet Armyworm” on a beet seedling.

 

Of course, there’s also an ecological advantage to leaving caterpillars and other “bad bugs” that chew on plants to meet another fate. “Basically, from a migratory bird point of view, the spring emergence of caterpillars and sawflies alone is like manna from heaven – nestling birds desperately need all those caterpillars to feed their hungry young,” Costa pointed out.

 

Whether through careful attention to creating a micro-garden haven for beneficial insects or through the Darwinian approach of natural selection, gardeners can rest easy knowing there’s a way to help the good bugs win and send the bad ones packing.

 

What attracts good bugs

Starcher, the author of “Good Bugs for Your Garden” prefers to use flowering herbs and wildflowers to attract insects to gardens because she believes that hybrid bedding plants have lost some of the characteristics that attract bugs. Those characteristics are nectar and pollen. Here are some of the herbs, vegetables and flowers she suggests will attract a wide variety of insects:

 

• Baby’s breath
• Carrots
• Dill
• Feverfew
• Goldenrod
• Lavender
• Lemon balm
• Marigolds
• Mustard
• Nasturtiums
• Parsley
• Queen Anne’s lace
• Rose-scented geraniums
• Spearmint
• Sunflowers
• Sweet alyssum
• Thyme

 

Got other tips for attracting beneficial insects to the garden? Leave us a note in the comments below.

http://www.mnn.com/your-home/organic-farming-gardening/stories/beneficial-insects-how-to-attract-good-bugs

Cheap and Effective Ant Control : A True Story

Once there was a kitchen in a home where meals were prepared, crumbs were dropped, food was spattered and pets were fed. Although it was kept relatively clean, it became a favorite dining establishment for a colony of ants.

After several years of unsuccessfully battling the ants with purchased bait and spray, the homeowners called an exterminator. The exterminator seemed knowledgeable and experienced about the homeowners’ pests: slab ants, he called them. He said they enter houses searching for food and a warm environment to build their colony — and this kitchen with its warm pipes and easy access to food was ant paradise.

The exterminator proposed injecting a sweet bait where ant activity had been observed that would attract the worker ants, laced with a substance that they would carry back to the nest, which would poison the entire colony. The plan sounded good to the homeowners, so they agreed to the treatment and the $130 price tag, which gave the exterminator 30 days to rid their home of the ants. The exterminator left them with the assurance that, “If you still see ants after after ten days, we’ll try a different bait.”

Ten days passed and, although there was some interest in the bait, ants remained. The homeowners contacted the exterminator who administered a second treatment, this one a ‘protein based’ bait which was likewise supposed to utilize the worker ants to poison the colony. At first, the ants came out in droves to ingest the protein-based bait. The homeowners rejoiced, certain their infestation problems were behind them. Thirteen days later, however, they observed more ants then ever! The exterminator returned with the ‘last resort’ treatment — a spray poison that was supposed to put an end to the colony once and for all.

The homeowners were guardedly optimistic about the final treatment, and proud of themselves for getting all the treatments to which they were entitled according to the agreement with the exterminator… Until the ants returned.

That’s when the homeowners turned to the internet for assistance. They knew a few things already: they were unwilling to pay another $130 — especially for ineffective treatment — and that their particular ants preferred the protein-based bait. With a little research, they discovered a ‘recipe’ for ant bait that has proved every bit as effective and considerably less expensive than the exterminator’s.

High-protein peanut butter boric acid ant bait
⅓ cup peanut butter (100% peanut; no carbohydrates added)
2 teaspoons boric acid powder
Abundant patience

Blend peanut butter with boric acid with disposable utensils in a disposable container. Label conspicuously as “Ant Bait” so it’s not mistaken as edible. Distribute in areas where you see ants, either directly on the floor or on 2″x2” pieces of cardboard placed where they’re crawling.

You may observe a lot of ant activity if the ants are attracted to it! Replace the bait every two days to keep it fresh. If the ants remain after a couple weeks, add another couple teaspoons of boric acid to the recipe and try again. This is where the patience comes in. Continue this process for several weeks until the ants are gone.

That’s what the homeowners have done and in five weeks from the initial application, they are currently ant free. This technique comes with no guarantee but it’s much cheaper than paying an exterminator (each batch costs only a few cents) and — so far — at least as effective as the ‘professional’ treatment.

The moral of the story is, if you’re willing to put forth the effort and patience, a homemade remedy for ant control can be effective and much cheaper.

ttp://couponshoebox.com/tips/cheap-and-effective-ant-control-a-true-story/#comments