REGINA - The insects are cute and colorful, and as it turns out, beneficial in eating other environmental pests.
They are ladybugs, and Regina residents got to learn how beneficial they are at an event in downtown Regina Thursday morning.
The city of Regina hosted an event for families and kids where about 200,000 ladybugs — a population almost equivalent to the human population of Regina — were handed out to be released either in Victoria Park or in their own yards or parks back home.
While many took home their new ladybugs, a few kids wasted no time finding a tree in Victoria Park where they placed the hungry ladybugs to do their thing.
Russell Eirich, manager of Open Space Services for Regina, explained why this release of ladybugs was good for the ecosystem.
“Ladybugs are actually a beneficial insect. What they are is a predator insect that feeds on aphids,” said Eirich.
Aphids are considered dangerous because they consume the moisture out of the leaves, causing the leaves to die. They also leave honeydew as waste and that can attract wasps.
The ladybugs are effective in eating aphids, mites, and other insects, and that means there is less need to use chemical pesticides.
“A ladybug can eat up to 5,000 aphids in its lifetime,” said Eirich. With 200,000 ladybugs released, they figure they will eat about a billion aphids in Regina, and that will mean less chemical spraying.
“It’s a great pesticide-free way of doing things without having to do tree spraying or things like that. It doesn’t mean that we won’t tree spray if we have to but it’s kind of the first start to really try and do things as an environmentally friendly initiative.”
As well, kids were also provided with green lacewing eggs that they could put in their gardens which also combat aphids. About 60,000 of those were made available.
As for the hungry humans, there were also a thousand cookies ready to hand out to the multitude of people who were expected there to participate.
“I think last year we were close to 650 kids. Last year we ran out of cookies so our cookies are our way to count,” Eirich said.
