After using Debug to identify the type of pests found in your crops, we have provided you recommended courses of action to maximize crop yield and prevent harm to beneficial insects.
Beneficial pests:
- These include honeybees and earwigs.
- Pollinators are critical for crop growth! If you have identified honeybees in your field, solutions, emulsifiable concentrates, and granulars are the best formulates to use. These are non-toxic to bees.
- Using more degradable pesticides will prevent a powdery, toxic residue. This both protects beneficial insects and prevents environmental damage.
- Honeybees are killed most predominantly due to aerial applications of pesticides. Do not spray pesticides during windy days, and utilize equipment that contains the sprayed pesticide into a confined area.
- With honeybees in your field, it is recommended that you apply pesticides in the evening, as bees forage usually during daylight hours.
- Earwigs can be both harmful and beneficial to your fields. They do ravage on aphids, mites, nematodes, and other plant-damaging insects in your crops. However, they will also eat plants, ornamental leaves, and roots.
- If you see earwigs in your fields, rather than using pesticides, clear your crops of dead leaves, twigs, and other debris. Use gravel insteal of mulch, as it has less moisture.
Harmful pests:
- These include armyworms and locusts.
- If you identify armyworms in your fields, avoid using harmful chemicals that would inadvertently destroy beneficial insects.
- Instead, utilize pheromone traps to monitor the presence of new insects.
- Releasing trichogramma wasps into your fields may help rid your field of newly laid armyworm eggs.
- Locusts can be controlled with the removal or forests and other blockades that may serve to increase population density.
- Although harmful to crops, locusts are deemed by scientists to be important parts of ecosystems.
- Overgrazing fields leads to increased locust growth, and limitations of these factors can reduce the locust populations in your fields.