Lisa,

Who is this? It is Katy.....as in Katydid.

Often bugs try to come inside to escape weather that they don't like....it is fairly common in the fall as some insects and arachnids seek a place to overwinter.

I have linked a photo of a katydid....yours may not resemble it exactly as their are many, many kinds (and colors) of katydids. They are related to crickets and like to make a lot of noise at night. Also, they are attracted to light, so maybe yours came inside seeking light!

We have gazillions of them here and between them, crickets, cicadas, frogs, etc., it is a wonder we can sleep at night because they sing together and make quite a racket. I see katydids all the time, but don't ever notice that they damage or harm anything.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Katydid

Thanks Dawn! I knew you'd know :)

Lisa

Lisa.

Yep, that's me.....bug expert. LOL

I THOUGHT I knew a lot about insects before I moved here, but let me tell you, living in a rural area with a gazillion of them sure has been an education. Since we moved here, I've become acquainted with 1001 bugs I never knew existed.

Dawn

Katydids eat the same thing as grasshoppers - grass, leaves and any green, living plant material they can get their chompers on.

Gamebird,

I know that they do....but I NEVER see them in the garden eating veggies or flowers or, for that matter, I never see them on shrubs or vines near the house. Perhaps they prefer the native trees and grasses????? Grasshoppers, on the other hand, eat everything I plant. (I return the favor by turning loose my 18 guineas to eat every grasshopper they see! LOL)

Hope all is going well with the new house and landscape!

Dawn

Grasshoppers have been horrible this year in my yard! I even thought about calling you, Dawn, to see if you would "rent a guinea". Ha Ha! Katydids are far less numerous than grasshoppers and eat much less than they do as well. I love seeing them in the garden! I probably see 1 katydid to 100 grasshoppers!

Does this mean I will have a high population of grasshoppers next year, Dawn? Do they or their eggs, or whatever, overwinter? I've already decided to cut back my clematis and passion vine this year because I think the spined soldier bugs are overwintering in it. I have lost numerous Gulf Fritillary cats this year due to them, and they seem to be everywhere hiding in the vines. I'm hoping if I cut them back that I won't see as many next year.

Susan

Susan,

Grasshoppers have been horrible and I think either this is a peak year, or next year will be a peak year....I usually have 2 very bad years and then it cycles down over a period of 3 to 5 years and then it starts up again. So, unless you have a very, very, very cold and wet winter which COULD kill the majority of the grasshopper eggs, you should expect a bad grasshopper year in 2009.

I start watching in January/February because that is when my hoppers start hatching in the pastures. If I start seeing high numbers of them then, I make a mental note to buy and spread organic Nolo Bait in April, when the largest population of small (1/4" to 1/2" long) hoppers is around. The Nolo Bait takes a few weeks since it is a biological agent and not a chemical one, but it does work. Nolo doesn't give a complete kill, but probably knocks out 70 to 80 percent of them most years. The guineas kill the rest.

Speaking of guineas, we bought 20 keats from the local farm supply store in June (they were 1 to 4 days old) and successfully raised 16 of them to adulthood. We lost one (don't know what got it) the first week they were released to free range (week before last) and now the 15 survivors have merged with the 3 old-timers, and the 18 of them scour the yard, garden and pastures daily, devouring every bug they see. The "new" onces are officially described as powder blue (actually palest gray) and purple (dark gray with a purplish tint to their chest feathers). Next year I want to add some white ones.

The guineas are entertaining, in a hysterically funny goofy way, but they are fantastic garden helpers.

I didn't know spined soldier bugs went after cats? I don't see many spined soldier bugs here though.

Dawn

Oh, yes - in the stink bug family. Last year I found them cats crushed in their mouths! Stink bugs will devour caterpillars, too, as well as preying mantids, spiders, wasps, and other predators. That's why a lot of us hand raise the butterfly caterpillars. As you know, the parasitic wasps lay eggs in a lot of them, too, eating away at the insides of a caterpillar until they form those little white cocoons on the back of the host caterpillar. Once I see these, I euthanize the caterpillar because I don't want to encourage the development of the wasps. I found a couple of the walnut sphinx with cocoons and euthanized them immediately.

Milkweed beetles have been tearing up the milkweed this year, too. As fast as I gather them and stomp them to death, there are more juveniles on the plants and they just eat the milkweed rapidly. I've managed to salvage enough blooms for 3 round pods of the gomphocarpus or Giant Milkweed, for spring planting next year.

Oh geez, I don't think I can handle more grasshoppers. But, my neighbor usually will have some of the Nolo on hand, and I may have to resort to that. They've really torn up the ornamentals this year, too!

Susan

Dawn, is there any "quiet" variety of guinea? I would love to have a flock to eat all our grasshoppers and ticks, but their racket can drive me right up the wall ;-)

Celaena

Celaena,

No, there are no quiet guineas. They use noise to communicate with one another and to alert one another to danger. Chickens are almost as efficient at killing insects. I have both. As long as you don't have a rooster, chickens are pretty quiet. Hens tend to squawk to "announce to the world" that they've laid an egg but otherwise are pretty quiet.

Dawn

Thanks, Dawn, I figured as much. I don't mind chickens squawking or even roosters crowing nearly as much as guineas. There's something in their pitch or key that is like icepicks in my ears. Since I'm really just wanting bug-killers, I'll stick with Bantams -- they're less noisy than most other breeds ;-)

Celaena

Dawn, how do you apply the nolo bait? My neighbor told me to just put some on the ground or in a container and the grasshoppers are attracted to it?????

Susan

Susan,

Well, I put on latex gloves and scatter it very lightly by hand at a minimal rate of 1 lb. per acre. Depending on the degree of infestation, I may go as high as 5 lbs. per acre. I'm sure the package probably gives directions for how much to scatter per square foot in smaller areas, but out here we think in terms of acres. (I have an acquaintance who buys it in either 50 or 80 lb. bags!)

Nolo Bait is a grasshopper suppression bait made from a very fine flaky wheat bran which has been sprayed with a mixture of distilled water, a "sticking" agent (Methycellulose) and the Nosema locuste protozoa, which is a naturally occurring disease that targets grasshoppers and other species that are VERY similar to grasshoppers. So, the hoppers are attracted to the wheat bran and, when they eat it, they ingest the disease agent as well. It is a slow-killing product, not a quick kill, so you will see grasshoppers in the youngest instars (1/4" to 1//2" in length) die within about a week of ingestation of the Nolo Bait. However, they tend to get sick and stop feeding on your plants within about 24 hours.

If you spread Nolo Bait at the recommended amount of 1 lb. per acre, in what is known as an "inoculative release", then it will pretty much wipe out your grasshopper population if you have 8 hoppers per square yard or less. Now, this is where it gets complicated. A lot of people don't start worrying about their grasshopper population until it is around 30-40 hoppers per square yard! So, obviously, if you have an infestation that appears to be that heavy, then you have to increase the application rate substantially.

So, maybe your neighbor's casual maner of putting some on the ground works for him, but I try really hard to count how many hoppers per square yard I have in my yard, garden or pastures, and then carefully dispense/scatter the right amount for that level of infestation. If I have as many as 8 grasshoppers per square yard, and I scatter at the rate of 1 lb. per acre, that will just BARELY be enough for each hopper to have a piece or two of the inoculated wheat bran.

Of course, the best thing is that grasshopppers are somewhat cannabalistic and will eat part of the body of dead grasshoppers, so the young ones that die will serve as a partial food source for successive generations, and the Nosema locuste in those bodies will help spread the disease to the later grasshoppers.

Honestly, I get a moderate amount of control within 2 weeks of putting out Nolo Bait, and the effect continues for the rest of the season. However, the REAL difference is seen the following year. Here's why: I see little grasshopppers, I put out bait, they eat it and they die. This happens roughly in April or May and we will have waves of grasshoppers migrating in until at least October or November. They are usually larger by the time they migrate in, so I'll see a lot less kill. (The more mature they are, the less likely the nosema is to kill them.) However, even if the Nosema doesn't kill the bigger ones, it does make them sickly and they don't feed as much and also their reproductive capacity is impaired. And, all of that is a short way of saying, that I see the best results from using Nolo Bait the year after I spread it.

If you want or need a quicker kill, the best bet is Eco-Bran, which is available from Planet Natural. It does contain a very low percentage of an insectide which is sprayed on wheat bran, I think. Planet Natural usually doesn't carry chemicals, but since adult grasshoppers are so incredibly damaging and so hard to kill, I think they decided to carry this product. One reason Eco-Bran works (as opposed to a chemical pesticide that is sprayed onto plants) is that the grasshoppers eagerly eat that wheat bran and therefore ingest enough carbaryl to kill them. Based on my neighbor's experience with spraying plants with liquid Sevin, I'd say the hoppers tend to avoid eating plants that have been sprayed.....but I guess they can't resist that yummy wheat bran.

Hope this info helps.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Eco-Bran

Is it likely to harm my butterflies/caterpillars?

Susan

No! It is very species specific and only harms grasshopppers and their closest relatives.

So far (and research is ongoing), Nosema locustae has been found to kill 90 species of grasshoppers (all from the Melanophus group), locusts and morman crickets (which are in the grasshopper family).

Nosema does not harm other insects, butterflies, moths, dragonflies, damselflies, mammals, fish, birds, etc.

So, you can use it with no fear.

And, for what it is worth, the Nosema locuste has been found to remain active for up to 13 years after an area has been inoculized with it. So, if you can get it well-established on your property, which each generation of grasshoppers "passing it on" to one another, it is a fairly long-term control.

I live in a very rural area where grasshoppers are a plague about 4 years out of 7, and almost unmanageable 1 or 2 years out of 7, and nosema (and guineas/chickens) have helped me keep our grasshopper, locust and morman cricket populations manageable, and I only reapply it about once every 3 or 4 years. Sometimes I don't even realize our county is in the midst of a bad grasshopper outbreak until I step on someone else's property, because I normally see so few on ours.

By the way, the nosema locustae we use today was originally found in and isolated from a locust species found in Africa.

Dawn