BEND, Ore. — When Chris Morris was 11, he stumbled across a bed of ladybugs while playing in the California woods.

“I took them home to show my parents, and they looked at them and said, ‘That’s nice, now take them back outside,'” he said.

But soon after, Morris’ dad, a seasonal postman, noticed that containers of ladybugs were being shipped in the mail to wholesalers as a form of natural pest control.

Fifty-five years after Morris’ childhood discovery, he is part of a four-generational legacy that uses beneficial insects as an alternative means of pest control. They control aphids, spider mites, thrips, white fly eggs and soft-bodied insects.

After collecting ladybugs for some years and selling them to wholesalers under the company name Ladies in Red, he sold the company and pursued other endeavors.

Then in 2010, Morris’ daughter, Holly Ford, who grew up around ladybugs, had a conversation with her husband.

“I had a fantastic childhood and my husband and I wanted to give that to our children,” she said.

With the help of her parents, they created a company, Northwest Beneficials, continuing the family’s ladybug legacy.

A bug’s life

Northwest Beneficials collects and sells beneficial insects such as ladybugs, praying mantises and earthworm eggs to commercial and retail businesses that use the bugs as natural pest control on crops and in greenhouses, orchards, garden centers and nurseries.

Ladybugs are among the most common beneficial insects for homes, gardens and farms. Farmers release them to hunt plant insects.

Northwest Beneficials sells an average of 5,000 gallons of ladybugs a year, said Morris — one gallon of ladybugs is approximately 72,000.

“We always tell people, we were green before green was a thing,” said Ford. “Ladybugs are beneficial to our environment, for our food and for health.”

From the depths of canyons to deep forests, four generations of the family search high and low along the West Coast for ladybug beds for their business.

“It’s not really a matter of how many you can get. It’s how many you can find,” said Morris, who is the company’s sales manager.

A daily collection varies, but a good day is 20 to 25 gallons, he said.

Once collected, the bugs are cleaned of rocks, dirt, leaves and sticks that may have also been picked up. The ladybugs are stored in large walk-in coolers, where they will hibernate for months.

The insects are sent out on demand, and a great majority is sold in late March through August.

However, the business has seen an uptick in customers purchasing them later in the year, as the demand for pest control grows into August and September, said Morris.

Ford and Morris said only a handful of people do what the family does.

“Everyone that works for me is part of my family. There are only a couple of collectors that aren’t related to me,” said Ford, “But we’ve known them so long. You know? We’ve cultivated relationships over decades with a lot of people, and we’re a little ladybug family.”

Online: www.nwbeneficials.com