If you are one of those very industrious people who like s a good spring clean after winter, please take a second look before you sweep these little gems off your dry spots.

These tiny filaments with eggs perched on the end are lacewing eggs. More specifically, I think these are Green Lacewings.  They are just one of many species of lacewings to be found throughout Australia. Some lacewings lay their eggs in a horseshoe shaped pattern. I don’t have a picture of this to hand, but they are quite striking in appearance when you do come across them.

Lacewing eggs may be found on the dry underside of leaves, but it’s more likely to be the eggs on impossibly thin stalks that you will see attached to your paintwork, on the wire screen door or under the eaves. The hatchlings are evidently ravenously hungry carnivores upon entering the world and will sometimes eat each other if food is not at hand. But if they spot aphids, caterpillars, scale insects and mealybugs, they capture, then pierce and suck the insect dry using their hollow front pincers

They look like miniature Dragonflies with their dual wings that are quite see through. However most Lacewings are a lot smaller than dragonflies though, being less than a centimentre in length. The way I identify a lacewing is the image of a small insect when at rest, with its wings resting over its body like a tent.

They vary in colour depending upon the species. Green to brown in colour is common. If you’d like to employ some of these in your garden to clean up pests, they are available to purchase from BugsForBugs.com.au But you’ll need plenty of live food for them to feast on, so that means no spraying with soap or oil sprays to kill the pests.  After consuming their prey, some lacewing larvae species attach the empty bodies/exoskeletons of their prey to their back and carry them around. it’s a very effective camouflage mechanism.

So, be on the lookout for beneficial insects in your garden. These are not always as easy to spot as you may think.

A good site for exploring them in greater depth is the Brisbane Museum. Here’s the link to their fascinating information. https://www.qm.qld.gov.au/Find+out+about/Animals+of+Queensland/Insects/Lacewings