The Plot Thickens

It’s National insect Week, and today’s featured six-leggedy is the ladybird. Recognize that as a ladybird? It’s the nymph, and it’s this that does most good for gardeners because it’s a voracious eater of greenfly.

Ladybirds are as susceptible to insecticide as pest species, and if you kill the predators there’s nothing left to fight the pests. This is why insecticides can be such a bad idea. Ladybirds also face a threat in the UK from the harlequin ladybird, a species introduced into North America in 1988 as a biological control which arrived here three years ago. The harlequin is proving invasive and threatens to elbow out many of the 46 species of UK ladybirds. It’s a salutary lesson that biological controls and not necessarily any better than chemical controls. Nature is a fine balance.

It’s National Insect Week. Not a six-leggedy at all today, but a representative of the synthetic insecticides; DDT The DDT story is a pretty good pattern for so many agro-chemicals and pesticides.

The story goes like this: Insects like Mosquitoes and lice spread dreadful epidemic diseases like malaria and typhus which, unchecked, will kill millions of people. While those people were peasants it wasn’t much of a problem to governments but due to their lack of immunity and living conditions it was armies on campaign that were particularly susceptible. So the government with an effective insecticide had a decisive weapon. And bingo, DDT turns out to be an effective insecticide, and it gets used heavily by agri-business to increase yields.

Then evidence emerges that it might not be as benign to non-insect wildlife as was supposed. It took something like twentyfive years of evidence and the near extinction of the US national bird for DDT to be banned in the US. It took another twelve years for it to be banned in the UK as an agricultural insecticide.

And the moral of the story: Synthetic pesticides can be incredibly useful but agri-business and the regulators will suppress any evidence of harm to health, wildlife and the environment.

It’s National insect Week. Today’s featured six-leggedy is the honey bee. They’re not doing so well it seems, with Colony Collapse Disorder spreading through Europe, a possible result of climate change. I’ve even had the idea of keeping honey bees, but I don’t think it could ever be safe on my allotment site which is neighboured by a public park and an infant school. In truth, I don’t much like honey bees. For starters they’re not beautiful like bumblebees and most significantly, they sting. My dog got stung by several dozen once and that was not a good experience.

I’m not wholly convinced by their contribution to pollination either. All different kinds of insect pollinate, and don’t bees chew their way in to runner bean flowers from the back? All the same, if one gets in the house it still gets carried out safely in a glass - it’s only ever flies that get swatted.

I’m not even all that keen on honey. I do like mead though.

It’s National insect Week. Did you know that the word insect comes from the Latin insectus, meaning “cut into sections". Apparently that’s because the insect’s body is like a stack of segments which are generally bunched up into a distinct head, thorax and abdomen, a pair of legs on each of the three thoracic segments. I’m sometimes a bit confused about what is and isn’t an insect - I didn’t understand how butterflies were insects because caterpillars have more than six legs - except they don’t because apparently the stubby legs at the back aren’t legs at all - sounds like so much creative accounting to me!

Today’s featured six-leggedy is the kirby’s dropwing dragonfly. Dragonflies are impressive insects and just a little fierce too. Stick your hand into a nature pond and there’s always the chance a dragonfly nymph will stick you with its jaws. Watching the nymphs climb up a stem to emerge as adults is a beautiful sight, as the creature pumps its wings up and clings on exhausted until it’s fit to launch itself. The whole transformation thing that insects do is fantastic. I’m also impressed by the size of the prehistoric dragonfly’s ancestors - wingspans of more than a couple of feet I understand. There are some 5000 dragonfly species to choose from so I chose my namesake as today’s featured insect.

It’s National insect Week, and just to make the point some friendly horse fly’s bitten me on the shoulder over the weekend and it’s going to give me jip all week.

Today’s featured six-leggedy is the privet hawk moth. Blokishly shallow I know, but I’ve picked the privet hawk moth because it’s attractive. I don’t think the photo really does it justice. Like it’s name says, it eats privet, and that’s fine with me, horrid stuff. Mind, it probably doesn’t touch that ghastly Chinese import beloved of suburbia, it probably only goes for the native kind.