Your roses are beautiful..... here in South Florida I am already in MAJOR battle with CT's.... Grrrr.

Socks: what is your plan? Mine were hit hard last year.

First, know that I absolutely hate spraying. Not only the chemicals, but the work to do it since I have 25 bushes, so the hand-held spray bottle isn't enough, have to use a regular sprayer. I checked into having them done but $200 is too much.

I've gotten information from the Huntington Gardens (here in Calif.) whose rose garden is also hit with chili thrips. They've tried some kind of wasps or insect which didn't work, so what they recommend is use Capt. Jack Dead Bug Brew (or Conserve which may be stronger). When 90+ degrees are coming, remove and bag damaged foliage and flower buds before spraying. Be sure to bag it as thrips can fly out of an open trash can. Spray late afternoon or early evening after bees are gone. Chili thrips are not active until our real heat hits.

I also communicated with someone from LSU who said to alternate the Dead Bug Brew (spinosad) with a soapy concoction of 1T detergent to 1 liter of water. Or use ultafine horticulture oil, Bayer makes one.

Your climate is probably more humid than here, so I don't know if these would work for you, but I wish you luck because as beautiful as the roses look now, when the heat hits, they are horrible when the thrips do their evil work. If you have any ideas, let me know!

Here's a photo of thrip damage on my bushes. It's just sickening. Sorry you are having trouble already.

I'm so sorry about the thrips, and my best wishes for your roses. Thanks for the above info.

socks, last year at our rose society meeting we had a guess speaker from the state of Florida talk about Chili Thrips.... We each got a little ornamental pepper plant and then later he sent us swirkis mites to combat them the CT biologically. It worked pretty well, but not as well as I liked. After getting more information it was recommend to us that we should use Imidacloprid but as a drench NOT as a spray so as not to hurt beneficial insects.

Here are a couple of articles that I posted before on houzz after much research

http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/BENEFICIAL/swirksi_mite.htm

https://mrec.ifas.ufl.edu/lso/BANKER%20IST/10.1007_s11829-013-9283-y.pdf

Thank you, Sharon.