How do mealy travel?

14 years ago

Hello all. I was wondering if anyone knows how mealy bugs travel? I have some orchids with mealy inside on some storage shelves and was wondering how they got to the top shelf. Do they just walk along, jump, or fly? On Wikipedia there was a different kind of mealy with wings, but do the orchid ones get wings? I was thinking of setting up mini quarantine areas where I put fly trap paper on a thin cardboard strip so anything that crawl will get trapped, but that wont work if they jump or fly.

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Comments (3)

orchidnick
14 years ago
Very efficiently!

Nick
orchid527
14 years ago
Auger

The mature males have wings. The largest, wingless, fuzzy ones are fertile females. They are mobile, but not likely to move more than a few feet in their adult lives. Juveniles are mobile, but they are also small enough to be carried on the wind and they are very hard to see when they are small. The biggest problem is that the eggs can lie dormant for some time before they hatch. Your plants may have been somewhere else when momma laid her eggs. My suggestion is to use systemic on the infected plant AND ALL ADJACENT PLANTS, also don't needlessly move your plants around until you can determine the extent of the infestion. I assure you juveniles have found their way to other plants. Of all pest, mealy bugs are the ones I dread the most.

Mike
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tlewis5643
10 years ago
I believe the last comment is correct. One of my large Jades came down with what I believe is mealy bugs. One day a bright beam of sunlight was coming in the window on this plane and I could see what appeared to be both one flying and one drifting on the air current. I sprayed with rubbing alcohol and it did the job and did not hurt the plant.