It’s a Bugs Life
Beneficial Insects Raised in Shasta County…
With its translucent wings and diminutive mint-tinted body, the dainty green lacewing looks like it just fluttered off the set of a Pixar movie. Run across a lacewing in its larval stage, however, and it’s a whole different vibe.
Consider it’s dining style: Its alligator-shaped body employs sizable mandibles to catch its prey, which it disables with a paralyzing venom before extracting the poor bug’s fluids.
The larvae’s favorite snacks? Primarily aphids but mealybugs, thrips, whiteflies and spider mites are also on the menu. Those also happen to be the insects and arachnids that love to munch on field and fruit crops, vineyards, produce, flowers and even marijuana plants. The larvae are nicknamed “aphid lions,” and for good reason, considering a single larva can devour up to 600 aphids before it undergoes metamorphosis.
Which is why Crysoperla rufilabris is one of the big sellers at Beneficial Insectary, a Redding-based company that produces and distributes green lacewings and a handful of other insects and mites to clients throughout the country.
The goal is biological control, using carefully selected organisms that are natural enemies of targeted plant and soil “pests.” By tilting the playing field in favor of the beneficial insects, farmers and horticulturists can reduce or eliminate the use of costly and harmful pesticides.
Biological control is a key component of Integrated Pest Management, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture describes as an ecosystem-based strategy of pest control that prioritizes least toxic methods first to manage pest populations and limit unacceptable levels of damage.
Sinthya Penn acquired the company in 1986 when it was located in Oak Run and focused on producing the parasitic wasps that disrupt the lifecycle of flies. In that application, the wasps lay eggs in the fly pupae; the wasps hatch, consume the developing flies and then emerge from the now-empty fly pupae to start the process all over again. Filth-breeding flies can plague livestock operations, kennels, landfills and other areas where manure is present.
Under Penn’s leadership, the company added a production facility in Ontario, Canada, relocated its headquarters to Redding and increased its line of products to become the largest biological crop protection producers in the United States, providing sustainable pesticide-free pest management for commercial growers, nurseries and animal farms.
In 2020, Beneficial Insectary was acquired by Biobest USA, a subsidiary of Belgium-based Biobest NV Group. Beneficial Insectary and its 170-member workforce continue to operate autonomously while benefitting from the global reach and research facilities offered by its European counterpart.
Christen Smith, who directs Beneficial’s supply chain, says 11 of the company’s biological control agents are produced in and shipped from Shasta County and the rest are imported from Belgium. Smith works with a broker at Los Angeles International Airport and contracts with bonded couriers to transport the insects and mites north in climate-controlled trucks and vans.
Beneficial Insectary also produces a variety of mites useful in controlling the species of aphids and mites that favor marijuana plants, a valuable asset for legal cannabis growers who are legally prohibited from using conventional pesticides. Smith says the cannabis market “was huge” but has recently cooled off due to competition and other market factors.
One of the locally produced big sellers is Orius insidiosus, known informally as the minute pirate bug. An “aggressive generalist,” the pirate bug uses its front legs to capture their prey (thrips, mites, aphids, whiteflies and moth eggs) before using a sharp, needle-like beak to pierce the victim’s body and inject a paralyzing saliva. The pirate bug completes its grisly task by sucking out the prey’s liquefied insides.
It is a bug-eat-bug world, after all.•
Beneficial Insectary • (530) 226-6300
9664 Tanqueray Ct., Redding • www.Insectary.com
