Green Gardener Ladybird Larvae to control pests in trees hedges and conifers (500)

I ordered 50 ladybird larvae from Green Gardener earlier in the year and it's been a storming success in my garden. There are over 70 ladybirds in pupa at the moment. They've devoured all of the aphids in one section of my garden. I've just got some more to finish the job whilst the rest are turning into adults! Some larve did seem to arrive dead. However I had plenty of live ones (some appeared dead when arrived but livened up once they were outside.) some casualties are to be expected with travel in the post. I did use the release bag but they were taking too long to get out (impatient!) so I just emptied them onto my plant in the end! I have the whole life cycle going on, and there's two to a leaf on my cherry tree! Hopefully this new set will be just as effective! Word to the wise, buy an African marigold, tried to deadhead mine and found 7 ladybirds chilling in the petals and pupating, they love them! Plant it near to the offending plant/tree as an alternative food source and put a little dish with some stones in and water so they have somewhere to stand and have drink. Search plants for beneficial insects and make sure you have some in your garden, otherwise the ladybirds might not decide to stick around! Overall very happy with mine and completely obsessed with checking on them now! (I do have a red and black one contributing to my litter which could be a harlequin or a very fat 2 spot, I captured him in my pictures. 2 spot orange coloured ones are doing great either way!)

Edit: Promt Service from Supplier. They agreed to send me another pack of larvae. Hopefully these will be better. Extra star for that.I bought these because they were the most competitively priced. They parcel arrived promptly with instructions and a cotton bag and instructions to release your ladybirds immediately. All good so far.The larvae are nestled inbetween little shreds of paper making them very hard to find. They are also really tiny so it's really difficult to relocate them to your plants. In the end I used a soft paint brush to lift them carefully and gently put them on the leaves of the infested shrub. It took me about an hour to do this and it was very fiddly.My problem is that there were definitely not 100 larvae in the pack. There was some evidence of squished larvae and there were a few dead ones but I'd say I had about 30 in the box, which makes this product very expensive.I know ladybird larvae can be cannibals, so I'm not sure if they ate one another enroute.So overall 3 stars from me - less than half of what I ordered arrived and getting the tiny little critters out of the paper shreds without injuring them is a nightmare. I also don't trust the cloth bag as it looks like a huge ask for the larvae to crawl out of such a huge cotton thing. I'd say I managed to safely release about 25, so you're paying about 4 times the advertised price.

Hung the little bag of larvae on a lower branch of the lime tree; stuck sticky tape twice round the trunk to prevent ants eating them, and bingo, the sticky residue has ceased. So they must have gobbled up the aphids almost as soon as they were put out. Slight beef though - and that is the hatched lady birds I have seen, are orange with black stripes. Are they indigenous? What I grew up with were red with black dots. Hence the four stars. However I am very pleased with the result. I am not sure I really received a hundred; how could one tell with all the tiny bits of paper? However they have done the trick. Now hoping lady birds will remain in my tree. Otherwise I shall be shelling out for these every year. But well worth it!

I was finding lots of aphids on outdoor balcony plants and chemical pest control didn't seem to contain them for long (environmentally friendly pesticides were particularly poor) so I thought I'd give the larvae a try. Rather than using the bag provided to let them crawl onto the plants themselves, I tipped the larvae and the shredded paper they arrived in onto the planters. They've been very efficient, completely cleared the aphids and the larger larvae seem quite mobile and have moved themselves onto other planters (I've moved some where there's been an outbreak of aphids further away). I think you'll probably need a repeat order since any larvae growing into ladybirds will fly off to continue their pest control elsewhere although I did find ladybird eggs on one plant.

The ladybird larvae arrived in a timely manner. There certainly were quite a lot in the box - I'd have believed a count of thirty, fifty would have stretched my credulity, I certainly don't think there were 100. So difficult to count with tiny critters mixed up in shredded paper. There were a whole lot of eggs in the box - maybe they didn't hatch or was that there as food? The larvae were really very tiny - but they can grow. The ones I put on a bud covered in greenfly certainly immediately latched on and began to chow down. So that was good.It was expensive, but is hopefully a green solution to the greenfly problem. But I am rather disappointed at the quantity supplied.

I’m giving this company 5 stars, whilst my little larvae turned up worse for wear, they have kindly agreed to send another batch. But more importantly for me, the company is wonderful, promoting nature’s way of eliminating pests and introducing lovely insects, eliminating the need for nasty chemicals. I spoke to the company and unlike some, they were so polite and also very informative, giving me great advice. This will be my go to company moving forward.

I thought I’d get a bit eco friendly, but I wasn’t really impressed with this idea. I got a little plastic tub with lots of little bits of white paper and some tiny black specs. I tipped everything onto a white sheet of paper and carefully removed all the little bits of paper. I counted the little black specs and there was only forty seven, not a hundred. I waited to see if any would move and eventually I saw some move, very slowly, but only six of them, so the others were either specs of dirt or dead bugs. Checking the package I noticed they were mailed three days ago, so maybe they all died? I’ll not be trying this idea again, so it’s back to the bug spray for me.