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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] lady bugs (or that insect that looks a lot like them)

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  • From: Dcimmarr AT aol.com
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] lady bugs (or that insect that looks a lot like them)
  • Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 14:25:53 EDT

If I knew that answer, I could make a million dollars. Unfortunately, at this time, many still think this is just a beneficial insect and not much has been done to find a way to combat this pest. As far as I know, it has no natural enemies.....who would want to eat anything that excretes an orange fowl smelling odor. 
There are some temporary measures that can help but none provide a long term solution to bring this beetle into check. I heard that this beetle has overwhelmed the regular lady bug population which is dwindling as this more aggressive insect grows in numbers. Some of these remedies are really not much of a remedy because they do not provide any long term control, only measures to pacify us. Until more research is done to find adequate control of these pests, one can only use these temporay measures and hope someone can think of something better.
For these insects coming into buildings, the only recommendations are to caulk any crack ofr crevice where they may find winter shelter, use screening on all windows and once inside, use a vacume clearner to remove them from sharing your home or office. Since they emit a phermone, they will tend to re-infest areas(homes) that have had previous infestations.
For use on crops, there are a couple of organic controls but it is crop dependant as in the case of grapes. One such control, the name escapes me for the moment, has a knock down period of a day or two but leave an odor on the clusters which is not helpful.......getting rid of one odor for another>?>?>Not good.
DC   



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