On this page the following entry/entries were made in the month of “October, 2011.” Check out other months in our Archives.
Bug Blog Archives for “October, 2011”
Like Adam and Eve, If Only
When some people enter the world of biocontrol — using good bugs to control bad bugs — they are hopeful and idealistic, but may have the wrong notion of what to expect. Some tend to think they can establish biocontrol agents in their garden, greenhouse, or other growing area as simply as making a single release then letting nature get to work. And while that’s a really cool thought, using biocontrol agents is more complicated than introducing one male bug and one female bug, like Adam and Eve, and spinning a little Barry White or Marvin Gaye on the phonograph. Population dynamics rule the day and need to be properly understood.
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Delphastus for Whitefly Sale
Hopefully our timing is right, and applicable. The latter may be the case for poinsettia growers who didn’t follow our advice and take us up on our whitefly prevention sale last month. A curative agent may now be needed. Thus, the whitefly predatory beetle, Delphastus cataliniae — which helps control multiple whitefly species in various levels of infestation — is on sale for a limited time.
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Pest Survival Guide Excerpt
[…] dragging one foot across a leaf’s poisoned surface three times within seven days can help […]
It’s been quite while since we offered an anecdote, so we’re pleased to present the following edutainment piece for your reading pleasure. To prevent any confusion, it’s a fictional excerpt from a fictional book — a fictional book written by a fictional pest, for real pests — preceded by promotional comments from the fictional author:
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Stratiolaelaps or Hypoaspis Sale
One of our most popular organisms can be used at nearly any time of year, indoors anyway, and is very useful for treating your media — soil, peat moss, peat lite mix, etc. — for fungus gnats, pre-pupal thrips, springtails, and more. By ‘more’ we mean possibly spider mites (in the absence of normal prey as we suspect) and other critters like snake and crab mites. (People keep trying them for other things and they keep offering generally good results.) So what organism are we talking about? If you guessed Stratiolaelaps scimitus, better known as Hypoaspis miles, then you’d be right. And for a limited time, we’re offering them at a discount!
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