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Friend or Foe?

SeeYouJimmy

SeeYouJimmy

I've spent 3 hours trawling the depths of Google Images and entomology sites to try and identify these beetles, but to no avail. Can anyone help me decide whether I need to go all homicidal on these critters? I'm in the South East corner of Australia if that helps. They look the same apart from the different colouring and the dark ones seem to like mounting the green ones, so an uneducated guess tells me the green are female.

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There seems to be a hell of a lot of them and I've only spotted them on my annums so far, which are in a garden bed only metres from the rest of my plants. The plants don't seem to be under stress and there is very little evidence of leaves being eaten, so I don't want to kill them if they're not doing any harm. I have not seen a single aphid on any of my plants so it's possible these beetles are the reason why. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
 
Don't smell them too much if they are stink bugs. My mate lost his sense of smell doing that.
 
:hell:I agree with mel, they look like stink bugs. Sounds a bit morbid, but crush some up and spray or place them around your plants, the smell that they make when squashed warns the others off. And its kinda fun..... :hell:
 
SeeYouJimmy said:
It looks like that is indeed what they are so it's time for some killing before they suck the life from my plants. Thanks all.
Click to expand...

Stink bugs do prey on other insects but will eat vegetation when the meat runs low.
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Yeah, wicked looking. :) That's a shot of a few that were residing on my Datil plant last year. They never bothered the plant.

Stink bugs, AKA shield bugs, come in a multitude of different shapes, colors and sizes.
 
There are various kinds of stink bugs and some of them are pure vegetarians but others are actually beneficial as they are killing other pests. You would have to find out which kind exactly it is to tell whether they are the good ones or not. They do not eat whole leaves or insects or so but pierce them and suck the juices from the veins in the plants and insects.
 
 
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