More Garden Insects

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In my previous post, I shared some images of the flowers in my garden. Now it's the turn of some of the many bugs. I finally managed to take a good photo of the gorgeous beetle that I mentioned:

Rose beetle (Cetonia aurata)

I'm also thrilled to see for the first time the coccinellidae (also known as ladybugs, ladybirds or lady beetles) in action working on pest control. It all started when I planted some fava beans (Vicia faba), and one of the plants (just one, for reasons unknown to me) quickly got colonized by a large number of black aphids. After a couple of days there were some ladybugs around, and I soon discovered some weird-looking egg clusters on the leaves of the bean plant. I first thought it could be another garden pest, but fortunately realized early enough that they were ladybug eggs, and so left them alone.

Coccinellidae eggs on a fava bean leave.

Soon the larvae appeared. It's interesting to see how they don't look at all like the insect they will ultimately turn into, and that they can look quite different depending on the ladybug species, as this excellent image shows.

The larvae are really voracious: in a matter of days the fava beans were completely free from aphids, and the ladybugs (and their children) went looking for new horizons. Now it's an ornamental plant which benefits from their pest control services.

To the left of the ladybug is a larva. 

A different species (and a few aphids on the right side).