Your lacewings
are here.
You’ve got lacewing eggs mixed into a light carrier. The job is simple: scatter them across your plants soon after they arrive, and let the larvae hatch right where the pests are. Here’s how.
What do I do first? ↓They made it.
Thank you.
A batch of lacewing eggs just shipped its way to your door — and you picked living predators over a bottle of something nasty. That’s genuinely the good choice, and we’re glad you made it.
These hatch into some of the hungriest generalist predators around. Let’s get them spread out and ready to go to work.
Scatter them
across your plants.
Your eggs come mixed into a light carrier of rice hulls so they’re easy to spread. The whole job is distributing that carrier over the plants where pests are active — soon after arrival.
Sprinkle the carrier across the foliage. Gently tap or spoon the rice-hull mix onto leaves throughout the infested plants — tops, undersides, and into leaf joints. Aim for even, light coverage rather than one big pile, so the hatching larvae start out spread among the pests.
Focus on the pest hot spots. Put more where you see aphids, thrips, mealybugs, mites, or whitefly clustering. Newly hatched larvae are tiny and don’t travel far at first, so starting them right on the buffet matters.
Do it promptly. The eggs hatch within a few days, and the carrier is no place for them to do it. Spread them within a day or so of arrival — see the next section for exactly why timing matters here.
Spread thinly, aim for the pests, and don’t wait — that’s the whole technique. The eggs handle the rest as they hatch.
The larvae
do the hunting.
A quick bit of biology that makes everything else make sense: with lacewings, it’s the larvae — not the adults — that are the voracious predators.
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Eggs now, hunters in a few daysWhat you have are eggs. In a few days they hatch into tiny, alligator-shaped larvae — sometimes called “aphid lions” — and those larvae are the ones that devour your pests, working for two to three weeks before maturing.
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Spread them out, promptly — or they’ll eat each otherHere’s why timing and even coverage matter: lacewing larvae are cannibals. If the eggs hatch while still concentrated in the carrier, the first larvae out will eat their neighbors before they ever reach a pest. Distributing the eggs thinly across the plants, soon after arrival, is what prevents that.
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They eat far more than aphidsLacewing larvae are generalists — they go after aphids, thrips, mealybugs, spider mites, whitefly, and soft-bodied eggs. One larva can clear hundreds of pests before it’s done. That broad appetite is what makes them such a useful all-rounder.
Sooner is better —
but a short hold is fine.
Lacewing eggs are best spread the day they arrive, while they’re fresh and before they start hatching. If you can get to it today, do.
Need a little time? They’ll hold at cool room temperature for a day or so — somewhere out of direct sun and away from heat. Keep the container on its side or as packed so the eggs and carrier stay loosely spread, not compacted. The longer they sit, the closer they get to hatching in the container, so treat this as a brief pause and get them onto the plants as soon as you reasonably can.
What happens
over the next few weeks.
Lacewings work quietly and small, so this is a low-drama kind of pest control. Here’s the progression so you know it’s working even when there’s little to see.
Within a few days of spreading them, the eggs hatch into tiny larvae — pale, spiky, and only a millimeter or two long. You almost certainly won’t spot them, and that’s normal. They immediately start hunting whatever soft-bodied pests are nearby.
This is the working window. Each larva eats steadily for two to three weeks — aphids, thrips, mites, mealybugs, eggs — and you’ll see pest numbers drop and new damage slow. The larvae grow as they feed, so they get a little easier to spot over time.
When they’ve had their fill, larvae spin small round cocoons and pupate. Some will emerge as adults; the adults sip nectar and pollen and mostly don’t hunt, so the heavy lifting is already done. For ongoing pressure, plan another batch.
Still seeing pests after a few weeks? A repeat application is completely normal for a heavier infestation — send us a note and we’ll help you time it.
The basics,
at a glance.
If shipping
goes sideways.
Live shipments mostly arrive happy, but transit isn’t always smooth. Here’s what to do in each case.
Totally fine. Everything we ship is built to ride out a few extra days in transit — a slightly slow package is not a damaged one. Follow the care steps above and they’ll be ready to go.
If you added AfterShip Protection at checkout, that’s the fastest path: file your claim directly through AfterShip and they’ll take care of you right away.
No protection? Email us at info@fgmnnursery.com and we’ll file a claim with the carrier on your behalf. Heads-up: carrier claims can take up to four weeks to process, and approval is at the carrier’s discretion — we’ll push for you, but we can’t guarantee the outcome.
good guys coming.
Repeat applications every few weeks keep new pests from gaining ground — lacewings work best as steady backup, not a one-time fix.
Tell us how
it’s going.
Questions, photos, a proud update when the pests are gone — we’re always happy to talk bugs. Drop us a line and we’ll write back.
Message sent!
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