sorry for too many conversations going on here at once! i have seen mayflies in my yard, just not often and not in large nu;mbers. maybe a river a mile away is not too far, or there is another water body near, like a creek, that i am not aware of. what would look similar to a mayfly? tall wings, "whiskery tails", etc...? i am going to have to drag out my insect guide again. i also used to see them often in another town i lived in with the river about a mile away. mayflies and lacewings definitely do not look alike. i also saw an adult lacewing prior to my larvae release. unfortunately, it was under my light instead of laying eggs :( i see few lacewings in my yard as well, but hopefully that will change. will adult lacewing food attract other creatures that i don't want, like earwigs?

I feel the same way. We're just starting to see them in the garden. Last night for the first time we had front row seats to some lacewing action. There were thousands of tiny flies or fleas swarming in front of the kitchen window and a lacewing among them - who would have thought such an ephemeral-looking thing could be such a kamikazi. Let's hope we see many more.

tantanman, I hope WNV calms down soon. It must feel really bad to see all your good bugs go away. I kinda know how you feel in a way, I accidentally killed all my lacewings and other beneficials off a couple years ago by using sprays but now I try to go all organic and not spray much (if anything). Now they seem to be coming back in droves! Johnmerr. Look at it from the bad bugs POV...lol. I havent seen many around here in the last few years (my grandfather was spray happy) but this year we have alot. I walk out into my backyard and shake a tree and POOF, lacewings are fluttering everywhere. I dont have many bad bugs in my trees, most problems are with aphids and CLM on my citrus but there are no bad bugs anywhere as of now. That why I thought it was kind of strange to see so many lacewings. I hope they arent starving...lol We have been having a strange winter here, almost like a mild summer at times. Not many chill hours below 50 this year where Im at. Compared to last year where we had MANY hours under 45 and some mornings even close to 35. I dont think it got below 44 this year. Not any rain either. Do you know if they eat CLM larvae? This post was edited by blazeaglory on Thu, Feb 20, 14 at 19:50

My sister-in-law (from England) calls them 'stink-fly' and says that that is what they are often called over there.