The City of Colwood has added thousands of new workers to its public works department to aid in controlling pests in the community – with residents encouraged to help recruit more.
Toward the end of May, the city released 35,000 ladybugs and many more aphid midges into trees and shrubs throughout the area with the goal of reducing the aphid population and the damage the pests can cause to plants.
“Aphids do hurt the trees, but they also produce honeydew, which affects people walking by, driveways, cars, because it is a sap that just drips everywhere. It also encourages ants,” said parks manager Gordon Beauvillier. “The city over the last few years has been working toward reducing our non-essential use of pesticides, not that we ever used a lot of pesticides.”
Beauvillier said this year’s release follows a small-scale trial release of ladybugs in 2022, which despite being conducted late in the season, proved successful.
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Staff release ladybugs near vegetation and allow them to spread out, eating as many as 5,000 aphids in their two- to three-year lifetime. The midges are kept in packages which are hung in certain trees to allow them to do the same, often eating aphids more voraciously than the ladybugs.
The concept came about as the city has been shifting to an integrated pest management strategy with a goal of reducing pesticide use to only when it is absolutely essential. Council has also directed staff to start work on a bylaw which will ban non-essential pesticide use in the city.
“Most of the pesticides you would use to combat aphids don’t just kill aphids,” Beauvillier said. “They will kill the lacewing flies, they kill the ladybugs. So yes, you are getting rid of the aphids, but you are also creating a huge imbalance.”
Moving forward, Beauvillier said the city will release more ladybugs on an annual basis until they notice the aphid population is low enough. But in keeping with the natural intents of the process, he said the city will stop releasing more ladybugs at a certain point so the ecosystem will be balanced, and not tipped in either direction.
“There are a lot of biological controls we are looking at in the future, not just for insects,” Beauvillier said. “One of the major invasive plants in the Royal Bay area is diffuse knapweed, which is noxious, it’s really bad for cattle, and there is a lot of it down there, and we are looking into some biological control for that too.”
The city is also encouraging residents to implement their own garden best practices. According to a release, packets of ladybugs can be purchased at local hardware and grocery stores and then released into your yard.
Beauvillier also encourages residents to plant native species in their gardens, and to be pollinator friendly by waiting until later in the planting season before tilling.
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