On this page the following entry/entries were made in the month of “June, 2009.” Check out other months in our Archives.
Bug Blog Archives for “June, 2009”
It’s Summer Vacation Time
Well, it is for us next week. Specifically we will be closed the week of June 29th through July 3rd. Make that the 27th through the 5th if you count weekends. We do — it sounds better. We’re nuts to do this, we know, but we’re too small and too lean a company to even let one person take the week off while trying to keep the doors open. Instead, since sometime in the late nineties, we just close the doors, pull the shades, and put out the Gone Fishin’ sign.
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Ladybugs On Sale Again Because…
Well, because we’ll be closed from June 29th to July 3rd (from the the 27th to the 5th actually) and it means that some orders will be delayed. And since ladybugs (Hippodamia convergens) are the easiest critters for us to deal with in terms of fast order fulfillment due to being drop-shipped, we can respond quickly upon our return and make sure everyone gets what they need without too much of a delay. We don’t want to encourage you to purchase a bug we might not be able to ship for two weeks. For more about our scheduled one-week closure, please stay tuned. The official announcement will appear here in five days (the 26th).
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Packaging Biocontrols for Shipment
[…] the boxes look fragile (they’re not really) and “perishable” from all angles!
It’s not easy packaging bugs, but we’ve gotten really good at it over the years. It boils down to understanding the bugs’ requirements, preferred conditions, tolerances, and durability. Then taking into consideration the destination, transit route, weather and temps along the way, and time of year. We then have to understand the materials we’re working with and how they mitigate the pitfalls we face. And since we try to contain costs, we must of course give them due consideration as well. All these factors in concert determine how we pack. We’ll break it down more.
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Because Reuse is Better than Recycling
A few weeks ago we were at the Nottingham Recycling Center — billed as the oldest consecutively operating center in the nation
— in the town of Nottingham, NH. We were taking our sorted cardboard and cans, glass and plastics, and placing them in bins to be properly recycled and eventually made into new products. While there we noted one woman, a Nottingham resident and employee of Portsmouth Regional Hospital, getting ready to throw away a sturdy, styrofoam box. We got her attention before she let go of the item. We asked: Can we have that?
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Aphid Midges On Sale
If your weather has been nice like ours up here in new England has been, and if you have trees or tall greenhouse crops like tomatoes that can get aphids, then you may be happy to know we’ve put our popular and very effective aphid midges, Aphidoletes aphidimyza, on sale. Most people think of using midges in the greenhouse, but they really are number one for aphid control in orchards and trees.
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How to Release Ladybugs, or Not
Back in the mid-nineties we were approached by a major television network’s gardening show staffers. They were going to do a segment on “beneficial insects” but knew nothing about the subject. They needed a few good bugs, some ladybugs (Hippodamia convergens), specifically, and whole lot of advice. We provided both in generous quantities, unfortunately while one was coveted (the bugs), the other eschewed; our advice wasn’t followed.
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