20160131A.jpg
This predatory mite is your friend!

If you look closely at outdoor plants – and sometimes even indoor plants – you’ll occasionally see a tiny red arthropod moving fairly quickly on a leaf or stem. It’s red or orange, it has eight legs, it must be a red spider mite, right? Wrong!

Small as it may be, if you can see it fairly clearly (assuming you’re wearing your glasses) and it is all on its lonesome, it’s not a red spider mite (Tetranychus urticae), but rather a predatory mite. There are all sorts of species of these mites, in several genera (Amblyseius, Balaustrium, Phytoseiulus, etc.), many of them are red in color (but green, orange, and yellow are also possible), and they are all beneficial, since they feed on pest mites, notably, but also on small harmful insects, like fungus gnats and thrips. You don’t want to kill these mites, but instead to encourage them.

Red Spider Mites Are Rarely Red

20160131B.jpg
The red spider mite looks like moving dust and is rarely red!

The true pest mite you should worry about is the red spider mite, also and more appropriately called the two-spotted spider mite (Tetranychus urticae).

20160131Dpg.jpg
Web created by spider mites.

It is much, much smaller than a predatory mite (without a magnifying glass, all you see are moving “dust particles”) and is, in fact, rarely red. It only turns red in the fall and even then, only outdoors. Most of the time, it is actually greenish with two darker spots. It never lives alone, but always in colonies. When numerous, it spins webs that link stems and leaves, webs it uses as a highway to go from plant part to plant part and as protection against rain (and pesticides). It’s this ability to build a spiderlike web that gives it the name “spider mite”, as it is not a spider at all.

Spider mites have a long list of hosts and will attack thousands of different plants, including beans, strawberries, eggplants, melons, roses, arborvitae, and spires in the outdoor garden and palms, hibiscus, English ivies, brugmansias, and scheffleras indoors.

The Good and the Bad

So let’s recapitulate: the good mites (the predatory ones) are red, about half the size of a pinhead, move fairly quickly, and live on their own. Their very presence usually indicates a healthy environment, so congrats! You don’t want to spray these or even bother them. They are your friends.

20160131C.jpg
A good shower will remove spider mites.

The bad mites are dust-sized, live in colonies, spin webs and are rarely red. They turn leaves yellowish and will kill plants if allowed to proliferate. These you don’t want on your plants. A strong spray of water will often blast their webs to smithereens and reduce their population to a harmless level. Or add a bit of insecticidal soap to the spray to kill them outright. Indoors, just sticking the plant in the shower and giving it a thorough rinse will do wonders.

Spider mites thrive under hot, dry conditions, so rinsing your plants’ foliage occasionally, keeping temperatures cool and increasing the air humidity will help discourage them indoors. Outdoors, you’ll notice the spider mites rarely cause problems on outdoor plants when summers are cool and rainy, but when they are hot and, especially, dry, spider mites really go to town. When summers are dry, hosing your plants down occasionally may be all you need to do to control spider mites.

Good bugs, bad bugs: to be a good gardener, you have to know the difference!

17 comments on “Don’t Kill Those Red Mites!

  1. Pingback: Red Alert: What Are These Tiny Red Bugs Invading Your Garden? – Bnr.Co

  2. Mel Akpan

    Are these the same as concrete mites. Mine are on the concrete wall and also in my raised bed that sits next to that wall. They move fairly fast and are seen when the sun is up and then leave in the evening once the sun goes down.

  3. Vincent Donnelly

    Enjoyed that bit of knowledge ‘thank you ?

  4. Louis Sorkin

    Balaustrium is misspelled. You mean Balaustium

  5. Ha ha ha. Nasty, invasive red spider mites can be hosed off the plants with water, but make sure to keep the predatory red arthropods dry so they can do their stuff!

  6. Thanks so much for this info. I have the beneficial red spider and its nice to have such info so I leave him there to help!

    Appreciated, Paula

  7. Pingback: List Of 20 Tiny Red Bugs On Plants

  8. Love reading/seeing this but i do have hundreds of these tiny red bugs across the entire garden…? just want to make sure I am still in the clear to leave them be as the garden is just blooming and being planted

    • There are hundreds, if not thousands, of types of little red mites, most of which are either harmless or beneficial. If they’re scurrying about, they’re likely predators. That’s the usual rule.

  9. Thank you so much for this article. I’m a new gardener, just brought a bunch of different starts home from various sources, and saw a few random TINY red quick moving bright red bugs on one of my newbies. Was worried, but now I will just check and ensure that they are the red predatory guys and leave them be!
    Thank you again.

  10. I read a source say: “In the absence of prey, predatory mites eat pollen and nectar and can revert to sucking plant juices.” Does this mean that predatory mites can harm plants?

  11. Thanks for the info, I’ve seen a few lonesome red bugs on the leaves of my plants that I thought might be spider mites. I now believe they are predatory mites as they are easily visible to the naked eye, very red and when killing them they left a red smear. I won’t be killing them any more if they don’t cause problems.

  12. Thank you for this great article! I ordered some plants from a nursery and there was a red mite on the outside of the box and I found one on a plant. I worried that these were spider mites, but now I know the difference between beneficial mites and the pest, spider mite.

  13. Pingback: Controlling Spider Mites in the Garden – Laidback Gardener

Leave a Reply

Sign up for the Laidback Gardener blog and receive articles in your inbox every morning!