Potentially seeing beneficial bug benefits! Maybe?

[Lmbauer2017]

Howdy!

Last year I was swarmed with a new pest: whiteflies. They were attracted to a huge cantaloupe bush. It got so bad that they spread to cucumbers in my front yard on the complete opposite side of the house. I ended up spraying a deathly mixture of neem and DAWN soap! Of course I usually use the mild garden friendly soap, but that just didn’t cut it. When I sprayed them it was whitefly Armageddon. 10s of thousands of white spots instantly stuck to the leaves. I won the battle, but knew they’d be back next year…

Fast forward to last week. I saw the first group of whiteflies swarming my tomato plants. Not many, but enough to let me know the time has come for another apocalypse. But I left it a week as work got in the way.

Yesterday I came home to see all these black small flies just sitting on the tomato branches looking very imposing. I tapped the branches (a test I do to see how many whiteflies fly off), and ZERO whiteflies appeared….. Have all the various flowers and refrain from chemical sprays began to pay off?! Please tell me these aren’t some sort of mature whitefly that’s just going to secrete black mold everywhere

What do y’all think?

(Edit) P.S. - I should say that I’ve already seen the incredible benefits of planting loads of varieties of flowers and minimal intervention from the significant decrease in caterpillar destruction. But this… this was an immediate response that cleared the problem out within days

 

[YumYum]

Looks like fungus gnats.

I think I see an aphid. They are a problem of their own. In numbers they will suck the life out of the plant. Dish soap will work on aphids.

 

[Lmbauer2017]

Yikes! I do have a small aphid population on some milkweed on the other side of the house (which I coincidentally just sprayed with garden soap), but they’re the orange ones.

So fungus gnats is an interesting observation, but what’s weird is these things don’t move at all when I shake the branches. Usually I see fungus gnats flying around frantically whenever I move, but I haven’t ever seen them outdoors so maybe their behavior is different as opposed to inside a controlled environment?

 

[YumYum]

I would think fungus gnats would fly around too. Try sticking your nose down there. If it flies in your nose, it is a guaranteed fungus gnat. Hehe. Aggravating things. I sound like a horse breathing trying to keep them out of my eyes and nose.

 

[redback]

On your mobile phone there is a strip up high on the opening screen with the G for google on it and then a microphone and a camera on the right. Touch the camera and photograph those lacewing creatures and google will tell you what they are - hopefully. Lacewings (if that's what they are) can destroy millions of pests very quickly.
The plants look so clean I think you might have solved the whitefly problem.

 

[YumYum]

Could be a lacewing. Good observation.

 

[Lmbauer2017]

On your mobile phone there is a strip up high on the opening screen with the G for google on it and then a microphone and a camera on the right. Touch the camera and photograph those lacewing creatures and google will tell you what they are - hopefully. Lacewings (if that's what they are) can destroy millions of pests very quickly.
The plants look so clean I think you might have solved the whitefly problem.

Yea I put it up on iNaturalist today. It gave me many suggestions, but they seemed all over the place. I left it up as “needs ID” in hopes someone will know it. It’s so hard to get a good pic because they’re tinyyyy. I’ll try google too (ty for the suggestion!) and maybe mess with the camera to see if there’s a special setting for super up close things.

 

[redback]

Yeah, it's a bit small for a lacewing as well. Your tomato is so healthy you can probably just watch and wait to see what happens next. Someone here might help further.

 

[redback]

If you bring up Playstore and use the app 'picture insect' that last photo might be good enough to id the insect.

 

[redback]

I have been researching this interesting case.
I think last year's plague out the back and then out the front was wider than just your property. I think it caused someone to buy a couple of million 'Delphastus pusillus' and spread them in your neighborhood. These little black ladybirds are bred in special laboratories in USA then sold to areas suffering plague. I reckon they bred up in the off-season and were sitting there waiting for the whitefly to emerge.
My advice is to put your feet up and have a glass of whatever and visit the Texas A&M Dept. of Entomology one day to find out the actual story.

 

[Lmbauer2017]

I have been researching this interesting case.
I think last year's plague out the back and then out the front was wider than just your property. I think it caused someone to buy a couple of million 'Delphastus pusillus' and spread them in your neighborhood. These little black ladybirds are bred in special laboratories in USA then sold to areas suffering plague. I reckon they bred up in the off-season and were sitting there waiting for the whitefly to emerge.
My advice is to put your feet up and have a glass of whatever and visit the Texas A&M Dept. of Entomology one day to find out the actual story.

Fascinating! I too am very curious about what the heck is going on. Google image search reeeeeally wants these to be aphids, but imo they’re just too small. It’s interesting their wings rest vertically upward as well, and they’re very stationary (predatory-like behavior I believe). I haven’t seen any of those black ladybirds though I will keep a lookout for them.

 

[roadrunner]

All insects are beneficial. I kill none...well, except those ones that suck my blood. I use a portable electric hand racket and buckets of rain water

 

[redback]

I haven’t seen any of those black ladybirds though I will keep a lookout for them.

The ladybird in question is 1mm long (a twentieth of an inch). In other words, the tiny black dots on your photos could be the predator Delphastus pusillus.
I have my doubts they could breed up so quickly, so I believe they have been introduced. They are available for sale and I recently saw on TV that they have been released here to fight a mealy bug problem.

 

[roadrunner]

The pictures in the OP may be aphids that have formed wings, which they do when certain environmental conditions exists.

 

[MiTmite9]

Yikes! I do have a small aphid population on some milkweed on the other side of the house (which I coincidentally just sprayed with garden soap), but they’re the orange ones.

So fungus gnats is an interesting observation, but what’s weird is these things don’t move at all when I shake the branches. Usually I see fungus gnats flying around frantically whenever I move, but I haven’t ever seen them outdoors so maybe their behavior is different as opposed to inside a controlled environment?

I bet you're talking about those yellow aphids that gather around the milkweed seed pods. So far, I haven't found any studies on those insects, but MY theory is that they're beneficial to the milkweed. It always looks to me like they're grooming the seed pods somehow. No kidding. (My garden has been pesticide-free since 1970.)

For many MANY years I grew milk weed and I left those yellow aphids alone. There were some ants, but not a plague of them. A vast number of caterpillars hatched into Monarchs, no problem. Sometimes I "ran out" of milkweed, there were so many caterpillars. I really do think those yellowy/orange aphids serve a purpose, some symbiotic purpose, in keeping the milkweed healthy.

Here's one thing I read online: "While a high concentration of aphids on your milkweed may look 'bad' these insects are not necessarily causing harm to monarchs; unless they are in extremely high density, there are usually not enough aphids to kill the plant."