[NAFEX] curculio enemies?

Kieran and/or Donna holycow at frontiernet.net
Thu Apr 15 09:44:41 EDT 2010


I spread sheets under our big Japanese plum and tried tapping and shaking 
several times over 2 sunny hot days, and got a total of 11 curculio.  I am 
baffled.  This is the 3rd mild spring in a row, (it's almost enough to fool 
the innocent into planting fruit trees), and I would think the curculio 
population would be huge.  I can remember shaking down 120 of them one year 
in a 2 day period.  Why so few?  It's plenty hot enough for them to  come 
out of the ground.  If curculio have natural enemies, it would take several 
years of steady prey population to let them build up.  Or is it the dry 
weather?  I know that Jap beetles will stay in the ground in dry weather 
waiting for rain.  Maybe what the curculio are waiting for is a rainy spell 
that will prevent me from spraying with Surround.  They are luring me into 
thinking I don't need to spray, knowing that the stuff will actually stay on 
as long as the weather is dry.  They are so diabolical....    Any comments? 
I suppose you all in real fruit country see steady curculio populations year 
after year, plenty to destroy entire crops on unsprayed trees, right? 
Donna 




More information about the nafex mailing list