Bugs: Friends or Foes?

When we see a new bug on the farm the first question I ask is “Is this bug a friend or a foe?” As I was pruning tomatoes yesterday I saw these little red bugs/eggs pictured below. A bug I haven’t seen before. To determine if this was the beginning of a problem or something else I used Google’s image search and found that these are predatory stink bug nymphs.

Typically, stink bugs are a pest but in this case this type of stink bug is beneficial. They will eat other bugs.

Can we take a moment to just consider how crazy it is that I can snap a photo as detailed as below, upload it to Google and have an answer back in seconds? My phone camera picked up details my eyes could barely make out like the spines around the tops of the brown eggs. The nymphs are about 1mm in diameter - so tiny! Crazy and amazing. I’m not the biggest fan of big tech but this was one very useful image search!

Predatory stink bug nymphs/eggs on a tomato leaf.