On this page the following entry/entries were made in the month of “June, 2006.” Check out other months in our Archives.
Bug Blog Archives for “June, 2006”
Holiday Vacation
Twice a year we close down for a week to regain our sanity. The winter holidays and the first week of July. Being a small company we don’t have the staff to have staggered vacations so we have to do it this way. Thus, this is notification of our up-and-coming closure for the summer of 2006. Specifically we will be closed from July 3rd through and including July 7th. Add the weekends and we’ll have nine days to recharge our batteries. In advance we apologize for any inconvenience our closure may cause.
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Killer Freight
One of the biggest disadvantages to using biological pest control is the cost of getting product shipped to you. Because the good bugs you’ll use in your garden or greenhouse are living organisms, it’s imperative that they are shipped via an expedited means. The reason is simple: If shipped via another means it can be at the expense of the bugs’ lives or general well-being. Moreover, slo-mo shipping can significantly eat into the usable life-span of the good guys. Say, for instance, you order some mites that live for ten days. Overnight shipping equates to a ten percent loss — not in numbers, but in the amount of time they are usable as effective predators. Second day freight is twenty percent in this example. Based on the usable life of most biocontrols, this example is exaggerated, but you hopefully get the idea. Time in transit has its own cost.
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Reaction Time
Will a procrastinator succeed with biological pest control? Probably not. The reason is a simple one: Reaction time. Reaction, as defined, is a response to a stimulus. The stimulus in this case is the presence of pests. The reaction time being how long the person discovering said pests takes action. The response type isn’t that important, not at first. The choices are basically manual eradication (pinching, trapping, etc.), chemical (spray ‘em to death), or biocontrol (good bugs, yeah). What’s of the most importance is the reaction time. If one waits too long, the control choices become more limited and the pest population gets larger and more difficult to control. Waiting too long can lead to one having to use a fast-acting, omnipotent broad-spectrum insecticide as the only viable response. This may be all fine and good for the regular pesticide user, but if you are into biocontrol, waiting may be akin to shoot oneself in the foot. If you’re serious about biocontrol, waiting can kill your program.
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