CAN you imagine going to your postbox to find a parcel of ladybugs or other insects?

You'd be forgiven for thinking it's a child's prank if you didn't order them.

But you actually can request live bugs delivered straight to your home.

The question is, why?

The team at Style magazine heard about this new phenomenon and decided to investigate.

It's a lovely autumn afternoon when we arrive at Toowoomba's Bugs for Bugs office.

The building is unassuming, set back from the street with plenty of car spaces, giant ladybugs climbing up the external walls.

It must be a lucky building, my colleague quips, because ladybugs are fortuitous.

We're greeted by a young lady, who introduces herself as Juultje van der Loo before taking us on a tour of the facility.

Bugs for Bugs, Juultje informs us, started in Dan Papacek's backyard where he used to live around Mundubbera.

"There was a big citrus industry, and he was giving farmers advice, but then he found a bug that was very good against citrus scale," Juultje says.

"He started rearing it in his back garden, with a little office in a shipping container, and there it started."

Shipping containers are still going strong within the business, however, as we later found out - the 'insectary' out at Mundubbera has about 30 surrounding the old butter factory that Dan converted.

They're an excellent basis for housing bugs and rearing them, and Dan has added humidifiers as needed.

At its heart, Bugs for Bugs aims to assist people in getting rid of their pest naturally - specifically, with predatory insects.

Toowoomba's considered the headquarters, of sorts, where the laboratory-type breeding occurs.

"In Mundubbera we have the more heavy-duty bugs - like we breed flies, then a parasite to the flies," Juultje explains.

"Then in Donnybrook, on the Sunshine Coast, we have two species [of bug] but that's more a greenhouse facility because we have greenhouse tunnels with plants in them, on which we rear the pests and then the predators," she says.

Back home, there are two species of spotted ladybird bred in the Toowoomba facility, as well as lacewings, mites, and wasps so tiny you almost need a microscope to see them.

"Ladybirds eat aphids, and they're really good eaters," Juultje says.

People can buy tubs of adult ladybirds, but there are also eggs available.

"By the time they arrive at the customer, they've hatched into little larvae and they eat way more because they're super hungry."

Getting eggs is best for home gardens and smaller areas, as the customer needs to place the larvae where the most aphids are before they pupate and become adult ladybirds.

Since adult ladybirds are able to fly, they are best for large farms and such, as they will move themselves to where the pest occurs and lay eggs there.

Sometimes, people buy one or two packs of adult ladybirds for children as a beneficial education exercise or for parties, as the bugs can be released into the garden afterwards.

It helps people understand that not all insects are bad insects."

-Dan Papacek, Bugs for Bugs

Lacewings can also be bought in an education pack, where children can experience the entire life cycle of an insect for themselves.

"Lacewings are generalist predators - they eat all sorts of things," Juultje says.

From scales insects and mealybugs, to caterpillars, whitefly, mites and aphids, lacewings will consume.

The wasps, on the other hands, are parasitic and lay eggs in pest moth's eggs, so when the larvae hatch they eat the developing moth caterpillar and control the pest population.

The bugs are reared in separate, air- and temperature- controlled rooms.

Most of the rooms we can move about freely in, but others - like the mites - we need to keep out.

Juultje explains that because dust mites and the like are so prolific and often carried unwittingly on humans, they can take over an entire crop of purpose-bred mites extremely fast.

It's less risky for ladybirds and lacewings to be around humans, and different stages of bug are kept in individual containers or tents.

Overall, it's an amazing and informative experience, and we all leave with a renewed appreciation of our buggy best friends.