HOW TO HELP INSECTS

The plight of insects and other invertebrates has been the subject of several of my notes. The situation is dire – just think when you last had to clean any squashed bugs off your car – hardly at all recently I’ll wager.

There are things all of us can do to help our insects recover. All the below will increase the micro-habitats where they live and boost their numbers and diversity, so benefitting our collapsing food chains and food webs. Yes – it is really important!

• Reduce weeding – native insects require native plants so leave as many wild plants as you can. Take a tip from Chelsea this year and allow some native plants (aka weeds) to stay in your garden. Leave a nettle patch and some docks, for example, and allow/introduce as many wild native plants as possible. When you musrt weed, do it by hand or use a hoe. Compost the weeds you collect. 

• Don’t leave outside lights on at night. This disrupts normal behaviour of photophilic taxa such as moths, May bugs & several other beetles, wasps, hornets and ichneumon flies. If you can persuade your local authority to reduce street lighting, so much the better.

• If clothes moths are troublesome, don’t use insecticides (in fact, don’t use insecticides anywhere if you can possibly avoid it) but purchase sachets of the tiny parasitic moth Trichogramma evanescens Westwood, 1833 to release, which will control the moths naturally.

• Stop using pesticides on your pets. These chemical get into the environment and are highly toxic once in the wild. The flea treatment imidacloprid is notoriously toxic to bees and other invertebrates. Similarly, take care with your own and your family’s treatments and medications – many are very environmentally toxic so don’t flush them away or dispose of them anywhere they may get into the environment.

• Make a pond or two – big or small, shallow or deep, preferably all four – and ensure there are floating plants/twigs which bees and other terrestrial insects can alight on to drink. Even a sunken sink or bucket can host many insects and provide drinking for bees and others.

• Don’t rake up all your leaves – let plenty of them decay naturally.

• Start and maintain a compost heap. This will provide superb insect and invertebrate habitat.

• Have lots of pots of plants outside, and troughs and window boxes, as they provide excellent micro-habitats and nectar flowers – but don’t use pesticides on them. Encourage pollinator plants – most good nurseries have lists.