Posted in Insects on July 23, 2012|
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There is a long list of insects that can be found in the turf at the moment. These include hairy chinch bugs, black turfgrass ataenius, annual bluegrass weevils, black cutworm and Japanese beetle adults.
Hairy chinch bug
We continue to do post-treatment counts on our hairy chinch bug trials. The majority of the chinch bugs are mid-late instar nymphs. This means that we are not at the peak of nymph feeding. This also means that we are not at the peak of hairy chinch bug damage yet. All of this is almost academic. Most lawns throughout the southwestern part of the province are dormant. Hairy chinch bug damage will not be evident until we get rain and the lawns come out of dormancy. Based on the heat and the amount of hairy chinch bug pressure that we see, we are expecting the damage to be quite extensive.
Black turfgrass ataenius
As far as black turfgrass ataenius are concerned, we are seeing large populations of very small (1st and 2nd instar) at the moment in our monitoring. Surprisingly, we are not seeing any damage yet. We are completely surprised by this. With the numbers of grubs that we are finding (15-20 per cup changer) and the high ET rates that we are experiencing, we are expecting to see extensive damage. Right in amongst the BTA grubs are pupae of annual bluegrass weevil. That is good news. The damage from annual bluegrass weevil is most likely a thing of the past for this season.
Black cutworm
Erica Gunn found some cutworms in her routine soap flushes this morning. This is not surprising because we have seen lots of pecking holes from birds pecking the cutworms out of their burrows.

cutworm from a soap flush
Japanese beetle
Lastly, there continues to be abundant Japanese beetle adults around. Since Japanese beetle eggs do not survive well in dry soils, I expect that they are selecting the irrigated turf areas to lay their eggs. It doesn’t look good for egg survival on non-irrigated sites. We won’t know if this is the case until mid-October though.

Japanese beetle adult on a golf green
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