Sir, If you the biology it can start easily, other wise first work on biology. Destructive sampling can yield some information on the biology, You can opt for two sets of plants with know number of pest and parasitoid population, You can corroborate the information gathered on biology in one set with the population obtained in the other set. Hope this may help a little bit in your plan.

The life-cycle of any pest will have various stages in its life cycle. record the growth rate and also the various stages of growth of a population of pest and based on the high mode of the stage recorded you can workout the life cycle. It needs lot of manpower and dedicated data recording with perfect  marphometry data in relation to time of different stages

Dear Dr Anantharaman, its not the pest's life cycle, instead, it is the life table studies of a parasitoid of a pest. Kindly think over.

The parasitoids develop in eggs/ larval/ pupal stages of pest insects. Therefore, the life cycle of parasites be noted with respect to the duration of pest stages and field data be collected and interpreted according as per given by

1. Andrew wartha, H. G & Birch L. C 1954. The distribution and abundance of animals

2. southwood T. R. E. 1966 Ecological methods, Methuen Lond.

3. Clarks et al 1968 

4. Elzinga, R. J. Fundamentals of Entomology

Parasitoids life cycle is  shorter than hosts developmental stages. It is preferred to rear the insect and study the parasitoids, sampling can be done from field too but it will be limited to larval stage.

You can go through the following link

https://www.google.co.in/search?q=parasitoids+life+cycle&biw=1402&bih=724&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=iiM1VIuDN5SMuAT0-ILADg&ved=0CBsQsAQ

I suggest you collect the life table of the pest and the parasitoid.  The life table of the leaf roller is easy.  You have to collect adults and let them mate.  After one day, you can collect about 70 to 100 newly laid eggs.  Then just follow the survival and development daily.  When adults emerge, pair them and collect daily fecundity.  After you have collected all data, you can analyze them using TWOSEX-MSChart.

The study of life table and parasitism rate of Apanteles bisulcata (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) will be difficult, if you cannot rear it under lab condition.  It is still possible to do the experiment.  First of all, you have to mass rear the leaf roller.  When you have enough leaf roller.  You can release some larvae in cages with host plants.  Then you keep the cages in field.  If you can catch the parasitoids (or the pupae of parasitoid), you can release the parasitoids into the cages.  After one day, you transfer parasitoids to new cages.  If pupae of parasitoids emerge from the larvae, you know the date of larvae was parasitized and the duration of egg-larva duration.  When adults emerge from the pupae of parasitoids, you know the duration of pupal stage.  Then you pair the newly emerged adults in new cage and supply them daily with new larvae of leaf roller.  In the way, you collect the daily parasitism rate and fecundity of the parasitoid. After you have all data, you can analyze them with CONSUME-MSChart.  You can download the two programs from

http://quarantine.entomol.nchu.edu.tw/ecology/Download/TWOSEX-MSChart.rar and http://quarantine.entomol.nchu.edu.tw/ecology/Download/CONSUME-MSChart.rar.

Think about using field cages where you can manipulate the hosts and the parasitoids on the host plant.

If you can obtain leaf rollers of a known age. Place them in the field for 24 hours, where they may be found by parasitoids, and then segregate them in the lab. If any parasitoids emerge you have a known day of initial parasitism, from which you can work out a life-history table via dissection. Do this with multiple samples across multiple dates and you should be able to obtain accurate data.

Se pueden hacer estudio en jaulas de campo de tres por tres metros donde se coloque los medios donde se desarrollan las larvas parasitadas y de alguna marera observar la mortalidad de la progenie