This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.

This week Kathryn and I are teaching Entomology, the study of Insects, to the Master Gardeners. Insects are absolutely fascinating animals, some are the gardener’s friend and some are foes. How can you tell which is which? Use this handy guide to help you distinguish between pests and beneficial insects on your plants.

Beetles, Weevils, and Curculios. All members of this group belong to the order Coleoptera, meaning sheath (coleo) wing (ptera). In this group, the wing covers (the two fore wings) are hard, often shiny and colorful, and completely cover the abdomen. These insects have complete metamorphosis. The ladybird beetle (aka, lady bug) is a familiar representative of this group and one of the most beneficial insects in your garden. Many destructive pests are found in this group, in addition to the beneficial ones. As a group they are rather clumsy fliers compared to many other insects. They have mouthparts adapted for chewing.

Beetle eggs hatch into larvae that are distinctly different in appearance from the adult insect. Some are C-shaped, white grubs with brown heads and three pairs of jointed legs. They live in the soil and feed on plant roots. Others, like the ladybird beetle larvae, look like tiny monsters crawling over the leaves of your plants searching for aphids to eat.

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We did our “design launch” yesterday for a somewhat technical but always delightfully written (and sometimes even funny) book on those underappreciated garden insects: Bees, Wasps, and Ants: The Indispensable Role of Hymenoptera in Gardens. Believe me, you can’t really understand what’s going on in your garden without this book.

The most interesting thing I learned today is the existence of the “Justin O. Schmidt Pain Index” for bee/wasp/etc. stings.  It’s rather entertaining reading, and a not-so-gentle remembrance of stings past. This may not be news to everyone—there is a lengthy Wikpedia article here, but I love the idea that you can now put a number to your level of agony. Kind of like the Sleep Number bed.

The Justin O. Schmidt Pain Index (Schmidt 1990)

1.0, Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.

1.2, Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet and reaching for the light switch.

1.8, Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.

2.0, Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.

2.0, Yellow jacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.

2.0, Honey bee and European hornet: Like a match-head that flips off and burns on your skin.

3.0, Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.

3.0, Paper wasp: Caustic and burning, distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.

4.0, Pepsis wasp (spider wasp): Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath (if you get stung by one you might as well lie down and scream).

4.0+, Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.

I have some California poppies in my backyard, and I like to watch the bees discover them. They lounge about in the middle of the flower, rolling over and losing their balance and falling off, only to fly back on a second later. They seem to get impatient with the flowers if they haven’t opened early enough–jamming their heads and bodies into the still closed flower and forming a little orange, vibrating package of petal, sometimes with a stray leg poking out.

It’s hard not to anthropomorphize them–they look so funny as they stumble from the California poppies, to the clover, to the rosemary, and back to the poppies again, covered with pollen and flying crooked. I know that they are supposed to be busy critters, but since I can’t tell them apart, it seems like there are just a few bees who hang out on the flowers all day, getting drunk on pollen. Teenagers these days!

I always like seeing them, though. It’s like finding earthworms in your dirt–you must be doing something right. This year I planted some crimson clover, and it finally flowered and lived up to its name.

The bees haven’t hit the crimson clover vintage as much as the rosemary and California poppy vintage, but maybe they’ll ease into it. I’ll continue to host punch-drunk honeybees and wallowing bumblebees in the Backyard Flower Bar, and maybe they’ll pollinate some of my vegetables if I promise not to call their parents.