FYI Per an Old Ortho book I have Ladybugs eat about 50 aphids per hour, If you import 1500 lady bugs you need over 200,000 aphids to feed them for 1 day. They look around and say this Joint doesn't have enough food for all of us and they take off looking in other places. If you add 4 parts to 1 part water and spread it on your leaves you can keep some for awhile, until the ants find the sugar. Mantids also have a big appetite, the will eat each other and most benificials in addition to Aphids, beetles leafhoppers, catapillars, grasshoppers, wasp and bees. They will chew on a bunch in your garden and the move on down the road. There is no effective way to keep them unless you also import a lot of bugs for them to eat. Byron