ants are eating my aphids?
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It takes place in farms and gardens, where many species of ants tend to herds of aphids. These tiny insects are a bane to plants—aphids weaken plants by feeding on their sap, and they sometimes transmit deadly viruses while eating. ... They secrete a sugary fluid called honeydew that ants love to eat.
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Most likely these ants won't hurt anything, but they may tell you there are sap sucking bugs on the plant - be sure you look closely at the stems. If you are curious about any insects that may be on your plants, be sure to contact your University Extension office in your county.
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Aside from their tendency to bite us, ants can cause other problems in the garden. Ants are fond of the sweet sap of host plants. A diligent group of ants chewing on a plant's stem or trunk is capable of girdling and even killing a garden plant. In addition, ants will cultivate and protect other damaging garden pests.
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Ants get into pet food too and pets may refuse to eat food with an ant colony climbing all over it. Worse, if ants actually get on your pet, they often bite, which can be an even nastier problem than you might think. The most threatening kind of ants, both to pets and to humans, are fire ants.
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The bug is a predator that feeds mainly on aphids and soft-bodied insects such as caterpillars, mealybugs and whiteflies. The insects are truly harmful only to tiny prey, but you could experience a painful bite from time to time if you have lacewings in your garden.
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Ants as a group are beneficial to humans. Their tunneling mixes and aerates the soil, in some places replacing the activity of earthworms. Many species feed on small insects that are serious crop pests.
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These ants - and several others - produce a type of chemical compound called pyrazine. It's a key ingredient in the pheromone trails these social insects leave for other ants.
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You may not realize that ladybugs eat aphids. And if you have a lot of aphids in your home or yard, you may also start to see a lot of ladybugs. Like many pests, ladybugs will be more attracted to areas where they have plenty to eat. ... If you don't, the food supply may just attract more ladybugs in the future.
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These creepy looking bugs actually eat bad bugs in your garden! They find caterpillar eggs, larvae, and aphids very delicious. If you see these guys around, best to leave them alone. While they are generally harmless to humans, they can deliver a painful bite if they feel threatened.
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Aphids are common insects that damage zinnias when they puncture the leaves and stem to feed on the sap, or juice of the plant. Other pests, such as mites and scales, also damage zinnias by feeding on the sap. Sap-sucking pests are tiny and are usually found in dense groupings on the stems or the undersides of leaves.
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These ants are attracted to sweets and all varieties of sugary foods and scraps. They also eat fats, proteins (obtained from eating other insects), and plant pollen. Once they find a food source, they'll haul food back to their nest for the rest of the colony.
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Ants sometimes visit strawberry plants to eat the sweet fruit. If you see ants on your strawberries, they are probably accompanied by aphids. Aphids feed on your plants and can spread disease. Aphids produce a sweet substance called honeydew that ants use as a food source.
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They leave a sticky residue on foliage that attracts ants. Burpee Recommends: Introduce or attract natural predators into your garden such as lady beetles and wasps which feed on aphids.
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Ants are attracted to and eat the sweet nectar secreted by the peony bud. Ants do not harm the plants, and the plants do not require ants to open. Before taking peony flowers into your house, you can turn them upside-down in a bucket of water to get the ants off.
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Garden ants can actually be beneficial in the vegetable garden – they act as pollinators by crawling around from bloom to bloom looking for nectar, and they can kill off harmful caterpillars. These ants do not typically harm vegetation by striping leaves from plants.
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Aphids are soft-bodied insects that use their piercing sucking mouthparts to feed on plant sap. ... Heavily-infested leaves can wilt or turn yellow because of excessive sap removal. While the plant may look bad, aphid feeding generally will not seriously harm healthy, established trees and shrubs.
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Many pests of succulents do the plants direct harm; ants are not among them. However, ants can cause indirect harm to succulents by introducing harmful pests like aphids and mealybugs.