Raising insects…

My children love bugs and insects of all kinds. Each year we allow them to raise a “crop” of beneficial insects for our garden. Without fail they always choose the same type of insect to raise. They both love to raise praying mantis egg cases. These truly are fascinating critters to raise. For weeks the egg case will just sit there doing absolutely nothing. Then one day the jar holding the egg case will be absolutely filled with thousands of babies. One year we let them keep them for a while but learned the hard way not to do this. Praying mantis will eat everything imaginable and eventually they devour one another. We now look at them for a few hours and quickly release them into the garden. I have no idea how many live to actually benefit our garden but we have fun either way.