Leave one area of your yard natural for overwintering bugs. You can place cut perennial stems in a cross-hatch pattern on the ...

A syrphid fly, also known as a hover fly, hovers over a flower. Syrphid fly larvae eat aphids and mealybugs, and the adults are pollinators. Photo by Jack Kelly Clark, courtesy UC ANR.

Syrphid fly adults hover over flowers and feed on nectar. The light green slug-like larva feeds voraciously by lifting each aphid and sucking it dry. Each larva can consume up to 400 aphids in the ...

It is the syrphid fly larva that preys on other insects. The larva is no beauty, having the overall shape of a slug and the buff greenish or brownish color, the velvety smoothness and the stumpy ...

Each larva can consume up to 400 aphids during development, “when syrphid larvae are abundant, they may reduce aphid populations by 70-90%,” according to the Cornell Hover Fly Bio Control Fact ...

The syrphid fly larva are what eat the aphids. They are slug like maggots, usually green or tan, wide at the rear and taper gradually toward the head.

Minute pirate bugs and the larvae of the lacewing and syrphid fly do attack chilli thrips; however, chilli thrips immigrated from Southeast Asia without their natural predators, so they are pests ...

This broccoli leaf is covered with adult and nymph aphids. Predatory insects like adult and larvae ladybugs, lacewings and syrphid fly can control small infestations. (Washington State University) ...

This hover fly, also known as a syrphid fly, can be found in many states including Indiana. Although they look somewhat like a sweat bee or the larger yellow jacket wasp, these flies do not sting.

Besides syrphid flies, you get help from ladybugs, lacewings and parasitic wasps in keeping the bugs in check most years. When plant damage becomes heavy though, humans may decide to enter the fray.

But perhaps one of the most actively annoying yard pests also ends up being the most harmless. Syrphid flies, also known as hover flies, are those small yellow and black insects that gather by the ...