Ladybugs, Praying Mantis, Ground Control (Beneficial Nematodes)

The praying mantis provides all-natural pest control by dining on a diverse assortment of plant-damaging garden insects, depending on the age of the mantis.

Mantises in their younger stages eat: aphids, thrips, flies, small crickets, maggots, leafhoppers, other soft-bodied insects.

Mantises that have reached adulthood prey on: spotted lantern fly, spiders, grasshoppers, cockroaches, adult crickets, larger caterpillars, earwigs, chinch bugs, sow bugs, beetles, other large insects.

Life Cycle

The praying mantis life cycle lasts one year and begins by hatching out of an egg case (called an ootheca). This happens as warmer weather arrives in spring. Higher temperatures lead to earlier hatching. Mantises emerge from a seam in the egg case. Other than a small amount of what looks like sawdust that hangs from the seam, the egg case looks much the same before and after this happens. Mantises move very little, and look like their surroundings, so hatching can be easy to miss.

While most insects go through a larva stage after hatching, emerging praying mantises look like miniature versions of adults. Only about half an inch long at first, they’ll grow rapidly through spring and summer. Eventually they’ll measure five to six inches in length. In the process they’ll shed their skins multiple times.

Mantises have wings. But it will be fall before a male develops his and takes to the air to find a female for mating. Once he succeeds, the female commonly bites the male’s head off while mating, which may help nourish her eggs. Using brown foam from a gland in her abdomen, the female creates an egg case, which she may attach to a branch. Then she lays her eggs inside. A short time later, she dies. The foam case protects the eggs from winter temperatures until a new generation of mantises hatches again in spring.

How to release your praying mantises

Egg cases may be allowed to hatch indoors or outdoors but they do hatch sooner in warmer weather. Indoors, keep the egg cases in their cup and set it on a patio or a window ledge. Remove the lid as soon as you see tiny praying mantises and sprinkle them at various places in your garden. We recommend this method because you will be able to see them hatch!

Outdoors, place egg cases in hedges, bushes, or limbs. Just be sure they’re at least two feet above the ground. You also can slip the egg case into a fork in a branch. Or suspend it to help keep birds and rodents from eating the eggs by using a string or a needle and thread passed through the outside of the case. Oiling the string or thread will help keep ants away as well.

Additional details

Most insects are relentlessly on the prowl for food. Mantises, however, will happily stay in one area and patiently await a meal that comes close enough for them to use their powerful forelegs to grab it. This makes them a good choice for early in the season, before many pests arrive. Once larger numbers of pests are in your garden, other beneficial insects can start to play their roles.

IMPORTANT: Praying mantises can take one to eight weeks to hatch—please be patient!