[heartwood]

That’s funny. I have Japanese beetles and praying mantises and the mantises don’t touch the beetles. I tried to tease a mantis into eating a beetle - took about five minutes before the mantis speared it - then it tasted it and frantically shook it off its claw - yuck! yuck! yuck!

I knock the beetles into water and then crush them. For a few days the ants clean up the beetles and then they get sick of them and leave them alone.

At the end of the season when the mantises are big enough to take a hummingbird I transport them away from the garden - but they have wings in that last molt.

[jmacusa]

Out here the mantis's eat them. They eat just about everything. Caterpillars seem to be their favorite. But we do have hummingbirds here. One little guy has been living in a tree across the street from us for years. He comes back year after year and loves my wife's Trumpet flowers. He seems to steer clear of the mantis. Seems also to love driving my cats nuts by buzzing our big picture window in the living room whenever they're sitting in it!