Last Treatments

I haven't posted anything on my blog for quite awhile. Not because I haven't been busy, I just wanted to get all my results together before doing so. I've been evaluating multiple spring applications of Safari and other materials for elongate hemlock scale control. Since I feel like I should wait 4 months before making evaluations, it has taken quite awhile. I should finish with the spring applied stuff this week, and then I'll compile the results. Maybe I'll even have them by Friday!

However, I did want to let everyone know that I put out my last EHS treatment yesterday. Well, Jeff Vance did actually. We treated trees with Sniper, the new bifenthrin product and a dinotefuran product (active ingredient of Safari). We mixed the products to give the same as 10 oz Talstar per 100 gallons and 8 oz of Safari. Two rows of trees Jeff treated like a woolly spray, and two rows like a twig aphid spray. We used about 1/2 the water the second go round. Those results, I won't have until February!

If this fall treatment controls scales, it would fit in very nicely with production of Fraser fir. With it you would be controlling woollies, twigs, scales, spiders, and Cinaras in go-to-market trees. You have lovely fall weather which is usually drier and cooler (it seemed rather hot to me in that spray suit though!) to do it in. AND, you wouldn't be affecting the predators at all. So that means you won't be creating problems with rust mites come spring, or a resurgence of scales the following year.

What predators are most important for the control of scales? Lady bugs will feed on them, especially the twice-stabbed lady beetle, but also smaller ones. We've also seen lacewing larvae feeding on scales. There are also parasitic wasps that develop inside the scale itself.

I will share one observation I've been making. When people are using just Safari in the spring or summer and not adding a synthetic pyrethroid (esfenvalerate (Asana) or bifenthrin (Talstar, Wisdom, Sniper)) you see a lot more parasitized scales.

In fact, one day I poked open a scale that had a wasp still inside the scale, and when I gently teased it out, it moved it's head around.

Bugs are so cool!

Predatory wasp developing inside female EHS.

This is usually all you see with a scale that has been parasitized. An exit hole!