Scolothrips takahashii Prisener is an important specialized predator of hawthorn spider mite, Tetranychus viennensis Zacher, a damaging pest in apple orchard in Northern China. In this study, a leaf disc bioassay was used to examine the functional response of each active stage of the predatory thrips against the spider mite under the conditions of （25±1）℃, RH 60%±10%, and a photoperiod of 16L:8D; the influences of temperature and age of adult thrips on the functional response were also investigated at different level of constant temperatures and prey densities. Logistic regression was used to determine the type of functional response and Roger’s random predator equation to fit the experimental data; then a non-linear regression, i.e. Gause-Newton, was used to estimate and compare the attack rates and handling times among different treatments.The results indicated that functional responses of the thrips, including 1st larvae, 2nd larvae, female and male adults against each stage of the spider mite belonged to Holling-Ⅱtype. The number of prey killed by the thrips increased hyperbolically with increasing prey densities in each trial. Handling time (T_h) estimates for the thrips decreased as the mite developed and increased with the development of thrips themselves, e.g. the Th of female adults of S. takahashii preying on eggs, larvae, protonymphs, deutonymphs, and females adult of T. viennensis were 0.4031, 0.6066, 0.7622, 1.0829, and 1.4524h, respectively, but when eggs of the mites were offered as prey, the Th of the thrips decreased from 2.779 h in 1st larvae to 0.403 h and 1.2660 h in females and males respectively. There was no significant difference in the attack rates (a) among various stages of the thrips due to the overlaps of their associated 95% confidence interval, but significant differences were recorded in the handling times. In other wards, the smaller the prey, the shorter the handling times. Handling times in female thrips were significant shorter than that of males, indicating that female thrips were more voracious than males. The maximum predation of the spider mite eggs by females and males of the thrips were 59.81 and 23.19, respectively. The analysis showed that temperature had significant effects on the predatory capacity of adult thrips over the range of 20～35℃. The values of a in both males and females were significantly lower at 20℃ than at 25～35℃. The handling times in both males and females decreased linearly with increasing temperatures. Based on these results, a temperature vs handling time model was developed and parameterized. That is, Th=1.1438-0.0261x for females，and T_h=2.405-0.056x for males (x is temperature), suggesting that the thrips would spend more time to handle the mite when temperature is low. Age of adult thrips imposed significant impacts on the functional response of S. takahashii attacking T. viennensis eggs. There was no significant difference in attack rates in both females and males among various ages tested, but obviously prolonged handling times were noted in both females aged 15 d or more and males aged 9 d or more，compared to that of 3-6 days old thrips. It was suggested that the ageing rate in males was faster than that in females.