Repost from Myrmecos: Honey bees as pawns

Alex Wild over at Mymercos has posted a thoughtful article in response to the media frenzy surrounding the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) findings published in PLoS One. This study linked CCD to two bee pathogens. The study itself was fairly small scale, and larger studies that will soon be published have been conducted (some at NCSU). What Alex was responding to, however, was not the validity of the work, but rather the media's interpretation, specifically those trying to link pesticides to CCD and who found fault with one of the study author's associations with Bayer Crop Sciences.

The fact is, all applied entomologists have at least some association with pesticide companies. They often provide research funding and materials, and much of the applied work that is conducted at universities would simply not be done without their support. However, no program I have observed, both mine and others, lets this relationship color their research results and interpretation. The reason pesticide companies fund university research is because we are objective. If we lose that objectivity, we would also lose industry funding (and our moral center). Further, at public universities, funding relationships are public as are all the results generated by funded research. I encourage growers, companies, and other researchers to request, view, and use results from my pesticide based trials. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

More information
Honey bees as pawns

NC State Fair Wine Competition

The NC State Fair has named its 2010 award winners. The top wines as well as a link to the complete results can be found here.

NCES Photo Contest - Deadline October 22

"Texas skies" by Steve Frank. Winner of Best Adult Arthropod photograph, 2009 NCES Photo Contest.

The deadline for the NC Entomological Society Photo Contest is October 22. Members and non members are encouraged to enter, and the contest announcement along with all the submission details can be found here. Last year's award winners can be viewed here.

Brown Marmorated Stink Bug - Guest post from Anne Nielsen

Anne Nielsen presents on BMSB as part of the Entomology Department seminar series at University of California, Davis. Photo: UCD

Anne Nielsen was among the first entomologists to study the brown marmorated stink bug after its introduction to North America.  I contacted her last week to get her insights on the pest potential of BMSB in North Carolina.  Dr. Nielsen is currently a post doctoral researcher at Michigan State University.  Below are her comments.

BMSB is predicted to have at least 2 generations per year in your region.  Given what populations have done in the Mid-Atlantic, it is highly likely that BMSB will become a pest in North Carolina as well.  In other states, significant feeding damage has occurred in pome or stone fruit. It will readily feed on vegetables (soybean, tomatoes, peppers and corn) and small fruit, although damage reports haven't been as severe in these crops to date.  I would expect it to feed on cotton, as other pentatomids do, but we don't have any data to confirm that yet.  Populations will be highest in late summer/early fall as the final adult generation prepares for diapause.  This adult generation is also highly attracted to blacklight traps, which are a very good way of identifying populations at low densities in the

farmscape.  Within two years of detection on farms in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, BMSB has negatively impacted the exant pentatomid community in terms of species richness and species evenness.  This is not surprising given the low rates of egg parasitism we have seen.  BMSB appears to be highly aggregated in the crops where it is present, although distributions can be patchy.

We noticed that new locations were usually first identified as a result of their overwintering behavior. George Hamilton and I set-up a website (which he still manages) that allows homeowners to learn about BMSB as well as report sightings.  We were able to learn of numerous new state records in this way and feel free to pass along the web site to your county offices and end-users.  I think it is important to have a centralized database for this type of information.

In other areas, there was a 3-5 year lag between the time of detection in a state and high numbers in agricultural crops.  However, I would not be surprised in BMSB has been in North Carolina for a few years already.

More information

Report a BMSB sighting - Rutgers University

Commercial Blackberry and Raspberry Field Day

The first NC Commercial Blackberry and Raspberry Field is being held Thursday, October 21 at the Sunny Ridge-Owls Den Farm in Lincolnton, NC from 9am to 12pm.  Antendees can rotate through a series of concurrent sessions on insect, cultural, fertility, and weed management followed by an equipment demonstration.  The program, which includes directions and presenter information can be found here.

I will be sharing information on our native caneberry pests as well as lots of updates on spotted wing drosophila.

A fall visitor: Brown marmorated stink bug

Stink bug adult on the hood of my car. Photo: HJB

After running errands Saturday morning, I noticed the insect above on the hood of my car. My apologies for the poor photo quality, but it was the best I could manage on the fly with my cell phone camera. This morning, another greeted me inside my living room window, leaving behind the trans-2-decenal and trans-2-octenal to prove it. From the glimpse I got, it appeared to be a brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB, Halyomorpha halys). This invasive insect has temporarily taken the place of bed bugs as the go to pest, garnering attention from the New York Times, Washington Post, and even NPR's Science Friday. A multi agency work group has been established to study BMSB biology, management, and regulation.


Why has BMSB generated so much interest this fall? For two main reasons:
1. Large populations have caused extensive damage in agricultural crops, and
2. They aggregate in structures in large numbers in the fall, becoming a nuisance pest.


First detected near Allentown, PA in 1998, BMSB has been present in the United States since then, but this summer their populations increased dramatically in the mid Atlantic. BMSB has been present in North Carolina since at least 2009, but has not reached the damaging levels observed in Maryland, north east Virginia, and Pennsylvania this year.

BMSB damage on an apple. The corky masses below the skin are distinctive of stink bug feeding. Photo: Penn State Extension

From mid summer through fall, BMSB has caused significant damage in the mid Atlantic to apples, peaches, caneberries, corn, and soybeans, to name a few of the crops it has been recorded from. Stink bugs, including our native species, the brown stink bug (Euschistus servus), green stink bug (Acrosternum hilare), and southern green stink bug (Nezara viridula), are difficult to manage with insecticides. Typically, broad spectrum materials, such as pyrethriods, carbamates, and organophosphates have been used to manage stink bugs, but may of these have the potential to create unintended consequences, like reducing natural enemies. Treatments for BMSB did not fit with carefully developed IPM programs for tree fruit in Maryland and Virginia, and resulted in greater pesticide use.


Stink bugs (native and non native) are emerging pests in many cropping systems due in part to their difficulty to control and in part to the increased number of insecticides (or other tools) that target a narrow range of organisms. For example, stink bugs are now a key pest of cotton due to the widespread adoption of Bt varieties that control caterpillars. Foliar applications of broad spectrum insecticides targeting caterpillars used to also control stink bugs but are no longer needed. The same scenario could apply to systems that have switched to other newer insecticides (i.e. Entrust, Delegate, Intrepid, Coragen, and many others) from broad spectrum materials.


The second reason BMSB has generated such wide attention is its tendency to aggregate in structures in the fall, much like the multicolored Asian lady beetle and another recently introduced bug, the "kudzu bug". All of these insects are native to roughly the same part of the world, China, Japan, and Korea, so it is possible that this fall aggregation behavior is associated with insects from these areas.


What should growers do if they suspect BMSB is present on their farm? Contact your cooperative extension agent to confirm identification and for management recomendations.


What should homeowners do if they suspect BMSB are present in their yards or homes? If BMSB are presents in your yard, there are few control measures that will be effective, and the most sustainable strategy is to tolerate injury to plants. If stink bugs are entering your home, seal entry points well (think of it as an entomological energy audit) and vacuum up the insects, disposing of your vacuum bag.

More information

Move over bed bugs; the stink bugs have landed - New York Times

Invasion of stink bug has homeowners, farmers seeking relief - Washington Post

Stink bug invasion - Science Friday

BMSB Monitoring - Rutgers University

BMSB Fact Sheet - Penn State University
Kudzu bug - IPM in the South

A different story at the Sandhills

After yesterday's visit to the Upper Mountain Research Station, I was eager to check my spotted wing drosophila (SWD) traps at the Sandhills Research Station today.  My first stop at the station was the caneberry breeding plots.

Caneberry seedling plots at Sandhills Research Station.  Photo: HJB

Raspberries are grown at Sandhills not because they do well here but because most raspberries cannot tolerate high heat.  The plots here are intended to screen breeding material for heat tolerance traits that will be used to develop raspberries that can be grown in hot summers.  In other words, most raspberries are not happy at the Sandhills.

We began catching SWD adults at the Sandhills on 11 August 2010 and trap captures peaked on 18 August.  See trapping data here.  Dates are in ordinal days; see here to convert ordinal days into calendar dates.  There were no blackberries present at this time, few peaches were remaining, and no larvae were found in fruit.  No flies were captured during the month of September, and one fly was caught last week.

SWD and raspberries have a lot in common in terms of temperature tolerance.  Both like mild weather and, at least according to current literature for SWD, do not reproduce in hot weather.  I suspect that the record heat this summer may have limited SWD's initial spread through North Carolina, but now as fall temperatures cool, we may see more flies and more maggots.

There were a few raspberry plants with fruit, and most of what I observed did not contain visible larvae.  I did find one, otherwise perfectly sound fruit, that contained one early instar larva.

Early instar maggot (center of image), likely spotted wing drosophila, in a red ripe raspberry at the Sandhills Research Station, Jackson Springs, NC. Photo: HJB

Because this larva was so small, I collected a sample of other raspberries from the field and will be holding these to determine if any others contain SWD larvae.

Ripe and overripe raspberries collected to determine the presence of SWD larvae at the Sandhills Research Station. Photo: HJB

 So, why do we have a large amount of infested fruit at Upper Mountain and very little (apparently) infested fruit at Sandhills?  Fruit availability differs between these two site this time of year; Upper Mountain has strawberries, caneberries, and grapes ripe and open to infestation while Sandhills only has a few remaining raspberries.  But why did the Sandhills infestation not take off when the hundreds of peach trees at the station were loaded with fruit?  The flies were not present in high numbers at the height of peach season, but I also think climate played an important role.  The Sandhills are in the hottest part of North Carolina, and peach season is during the hottest part of the year.  This may have limited the spread of SWD into the Sandhills this summer.  Now that the fly is present and reproducing, it will be interesting to see what next summer holds.  We will be there to find out.


Sponsored by the Southern Region Small Fruit Consortium, Project 2010 E-01.