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ENTICING
INSECTS
(a) Butterfly
Paradise
Butterflies and moths are some of
the smallest but most beautiful visitors to our garden and
with a bit of careful planning you can turn your garden into
a butterfly haven. They fly around plants like tiny jewels,
laying their eggs.
Butterfly Species
Peacock ? Dandelion, Daisies,
Nettles
Brimstones ? Rockery plants,
Thistle
Cabbage White ? Cabbage
Plants
Painted Lady ? Buddleia, (Butterfly
Bush)
Red Admiral ? Rotten
Fruit
Camberwell ? Brightly Coloured
Flowers
Tortoiseshell ? Iceplant
Four Important Tips
v Do not touch butterflies and
moths they are very delicate.
v The more plants that are
available the more butterflies you will see.
v Butterflies are getting rare -
with your help maybe there will be more around next
year!
v Even the tiniest garden can
attract butterflies and moths.
What We Have Done.
1. We have planted cabbage seeds in
our school patch.
2. We are planting a Buddleia
plant.
3. We have also planted wild flower
seeds.
4. We are leaving an area of uncut
grass to attract more butterflies.
(b) Ladybirds
The lady bird is a small beetle
with a round body like half a pea. It is less than 1.2cm in
length. It is rounded above and flat below with a small head
and short legs. Ladybirds are often red or orange above,
spotted with black, white or yellow. Some species are black
with or without spots. The larval are also brilliantly
coloured, often blue with strips of orange or black.
Most ladybirds are coniferous. They
also feed on insects harmful to plants such as aphids and
scale insects. For this reason farmers and fruit growers
find ladybirds very helpful. Some ladybirds are harmful to
crops but the majority far out-ways the damage done by
harmful ones. The ladybird is a bug. They also make up the
family Coccinellidae. The most common ladybird is red with
black spots.
Ladybirds are very plentiful in our
school grounds and infants, in particular get very excited
when they locate one. We hope our patch will continue to be
a haven for this beautiful and helpful creature.
(c) Bees
We have sown flowers in our school
garden to provide bees with a ready supply of
food.
The queen bee lays up to 3000 eggs
a day. The eggs are fertilised by male drones and hatch into
larvae. All the work - making the cells and collecting
nectar and pollen from plants to feed the larvae - is done
by the worker bees. They are females which cannot breed.
Workers are hatched from fertilized eggs and drones from
unfertilised eggs. Honey is made by the workers from the
nectar they gather. They also make beeswax, from which they
build a honeycomb.
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