Wintering lacewings in the house: these are the advantages

If you want to hibernate lacewings in the house, you must ensure that they offer the right insects the right climate and food. If you manage to keep the green flappers in the house, you are doing your houseplants a big favor.

Why lacewings should hibernate indoors

Too bad that lacewings are unknown to many. This is how these tender insects are usually fought as soon as they appear in the house. It is worth protecting them because they are perfect plant protectors. Their larvae eat aphids.

• The green to beige-yellow lacewings, about one to one and a half centimeters long, are slender, have long filigree antennae and often golden-yellow eyes - which also gives them the name golden eye. You can also recognize the lacewing by its delicate, wafer-thin and net-like wings.
• A lacewing lays up to 350 eggs - preferably on plants affected by aphids. There are usually two generations of offspring a year, sometimes up to three.
• The larvae of the tender insects are also called " aphid lion ": they each eat up to hundreds of aphids. Strictly speaking, the pests are impaled on them and sucked out. They also love spider mite eggs and thrips.
• It is therefore worth promoting the lacewing populations in the garden, which you can achieve, for example, with red-painted winter storage boxes made of wood, accumulation of autumn leaves and planting nectar-rich autumn flowers.
• So that the chances of survival of the insects are increased in winter, you can also offer a garage, garden shed or house as a place to spend the winter. In the spring, you can quit the little plant protectors through the open windows to work outdoors.
• If you keep a population of lacewings in the house, then your houseplants will also benefit from the pest-eating insects.

This is how the lacewing survives in the house

For example, if you spot lacewings in winter or late autumn behind your curtain or picture frame, you can do the following:

• Just let the animal hibernate there undisturbed. If it is a cool place, the animal has deliberately looked for this place. In spring, when the temperatures rise, be sure to ventilate well that the awakened animals can go back to nature.
• If the lacewing is not in the rigidity and the place where it was sitting is relatively warm, feed the animal. You can offer sugar or honey water or fruit pieces. Otherwise the adult insect would not survive.
• If you have a pest infestation on your houseplants, you can try putting the lacewing on them afterwards. However, it should not be too warm and not too dry air in the room.
• Don't expect too much from a single lacewing, however. If you have only one animal - female or male - in the house, it cannot multiply.
• For single specimens, take the lacewing to a cooler room in the house after "feeding". That can also be your attic. The animals can then spend the winter there in their usual rigidity. Even then: don't miss the release in spring.
• You can also deliberately bring lacewing populations into your home. Lacewing eggs in various forms can be bought in the garden center or on the Internet. Then pay attention to the supplied application descriptions.
• Of course, if you don't want to damage the lacewings, you shouldn't spray insecticides in your flower stock or other places around the house.

We have put together further measures on how you can keep annoying aphids away from your plants without chemicals, in the next practical tip.