Three Pests Worth Knowing About This August
August is doing exactly what August does in West Texas.
As of Friday afternoon, our current soil temperature is 118°F, with a five-day average of 96.3°F. Year-to-date rainfall is 15.43 inches, putting us 2.57 inches above normal for this point in the year. We have had good moisture this year, but there is no meaningful rain in the immediate forecast. Right now it is simply hot, humid and August.
This week we're changing gears. We've had questions at the store about fleas and ticks, and there is also a relatively new pest receiving attention across Texas, the pasture mealybug.
Before we talk about what to spray, let's first understand what we're trying to control.
1. Pasture Mealybug
One We Need to Start Watching
The pasture mealybug, Heliococcus summervillei, has become a pest worth watching in Texas. And despite its name, this isn't something that only concerns ranchers.
It has been found feeding on Bermudagrass and St. Augustinegrass, which means those of us working in Lawn & Landscape need to know what we're looking for.
Mealybugs are small, soft-bodied insects that can have a white, waxy appearance. To the untrained eye they can look somewhat like the woolly aphids we occasionally see on landscape plants.
Both are sap-feeding insects, but they are not the same pest.
Pasture mealybugs can be difficult to find because they may be down around the base of the grass, underneath the thatch, around the roots and even slightly below the soil surface.
They feed by inserting piercing-sucking mouthparts into the plant. Feeding can eventually cause grass to become yellow, reddish or purple, stunted and eventually brown or dead.
That's where identification becomes important.
A declining lawn in August could be drought stress. It could be irrigation coverage. It could be disease. It could be insects. And now pasture mealybug is another possibility we need to keep in the back of our minds.
Don't diagnose a lawn from 20 feet away. Get down and look.
There is another reason we're not going to give you a spray recommendation here. Research into control of this relatively new Texas problem is still developing, and Texas A&M has cautioned that broad-spectrum insecticides can potentially eliminate beneficial insects without solving the underlying mealybug problem.
Sometimes the best recommendation we can give you is:
Don't spray until we know what we're spraying.
2. Fleas
The Flea You See Isn't the Whole Problem
When someone comes into BES-TEX and says, "I've got fleas," they're normally talking about the adult fleas jumping on their ankles or crawling on the dog.
Unfortunately, that's only one stage of the problem.
A flea goes through complete metamorphosis:
EGG → LARVA → PUPA → ADULT
Understanding those four stages changes the way we control fleas.
The adult
Adult fleas live on an animal and feed on blood. After feeding, females begin producing eggs.
Those eggs aren't glued to your dog.
They fall off.
That means wherever the animal sleeps, walks and spends its time becomes part of the flea problem.
The egg
Eggs can fall into carpet, furniture, pet bedding, cracks and crevices and protected areas outdoors.
Eventually those eggs hatch into larvae.
The larva
Here's something many people don't know:
Flea larvae don't live on your dog and suck blood.
They're living down in the environment. Among other organic material, they feed heavily on dried blood contained in the feces of adult fleas, commonly called flea dirt.
Eventually the larva forms a cocoon and enters the pupal stage.
The pupa, this is the aggravating one
Inside that cocoon, the developing flea is protected.
The adult can remain inside until environmental signals tell it that a host may be nearby.
Heat, carbon dioxide, movement and vibration can help stimulate emergence.
Which brings us to one of our favorite BES-TEX flea-control recommendations:
Vacuum like your mother-in-law is coming over.
And there's actually science behind it.
Vacuuming removes eggs, larvae, flea dirt and other organic material. The vibration can also encourage developed adults to emerge from their protected cocoons.
Vacuum the carpet. Vacuum underneath furniture. Vacuum along baseboards. Vacuum wherever the dog or cat spends time.
And don't do it once.
Do it repeatedly.
Breaking the Flea Life Cycle
This is where an IGR, Insect Growth Regulator, becomes extremely valuable.
An IGR isn't simply another insecticide trying to knock down the adult flea you can see. Depending upon the active ingredient, it interferes with the development and reproduction of the immature flea population.
At BES-TEX, products such as NyGuard, Tekko Pro and Tekko Trio give us IGR options for appropriate labeled applications.
But here's the important part:
An IGR isn't necessarily the entire flea treatment.
If adults are already jumping everywhere, we generally want to address the existing adult population and interrupt the next generation.
Think of it this way:
Adulticide = deal with today's fleas.
IGR = help prevent tomorrow's fleas.
That's why a good flea program is a program, not simply one spray.
Indoors that means sanitation and vacuuming combined with properly selected and labeled treatments.
Outdoors, don't automatically spray the entire lawn.
At our August temperatures, a wide-open sunny lawn is a pretty hostile environment for flea larvae. Concentrate your inspection around the places that stay shaded, protected and humid, especially where animals spend their time.
Look underneath decks, around dog houses, beneath shrubs, along shaded foundations and in pet resting areas.
Treat where the flea lives, not simply where you own grass.
3. Ticks
Same Customer Complaint, Different Biology
Customers often say "fleas and ticks" as though they're almost the same insect.
They're not.
In fact, a tick isn't an insect at all.
Ticks are arachnids, relatives of spiders and mites.
Their life cycle is:
EGG → LARVA → NYMPH → ADULT
A newly hatched tick larva has six legs. After it feeds and molts into a nymph, it has eight.
Unlike fleas, there is no pupal stage.
Ticks generally require blood meals as they progress through their life cycle, and depending upon the species, they may feed on different hosts along the way.
Dogs, wildlife, rodents, birds, livestock and humans can all become hosts for different tick species.
And that tells us something about control.
Tick Control Starts With Habitat
Before reaching for the sprayer, look at the property.
Ticks prefer protected environments. Tall grass, weeds, leaf litter, brush, shaded fence lines, wood piles and areas frequented by wildlife can all provide favorable habitat.
So our first insecticide is sometimes a rake and a mower.
Keep vegetation maintained. Remove unnecessary leaf litter and debris. Pay attention to shaded edges and places where pets and wildlife travel.
Then we can use an appropriately labeled residual insecticide where necessary.
Products containing active ingredients such as bifenthrin, lambda-cyhalothrin, deltamethrin or cypermethrin can be useful tools when the individual product is labeled for the pest and application site.
But here's where fleas and ticks separate.
For fleas, breaking the immature life cycle with an IGR can be a major part of the program.
With ticks, our control strategy relies much more heavily on habitat management, host management and appropriately labeled tick-control products.
Same backyard.
Two completely different pests.
Two different approaches.
The BES-TEX Way
If there's one thing I want you to take away from this week's article, it isn't the name of an insecticide.
It's this:
Know what you're trying to kill before deciding how to kill it.
A pasture mealybug isn't a woolly aphid.
A flea isn't a tick.
A brown patch in the lawn isn't automatically fungus.
And seeing an insect doesn't automatically mean the answer is an insecticide.
Bring us a sample. Bring us a picture. Tell us where you're finding the problem and what you've already done.
Sometimes we'll recommend a product.
Sometimes we'll recommend changing something you're doing.
And occasionally we'll tell you not to spray anything at all.
That's what we're here for.
One Last Thought, TOY
This doesn't have anything to do with fleas, ticks or mealybugs.
It has to do with people.
Every once in a while someone crosses your mind. Maybe it's somebody you talked to yesterday. Maybe it's a friend you haven't talked to in six months. Maybe it's someone you haven't seen in years.
When that happens, don't overthink it.
Send them a simple message:
"Hey, just thinking of you."
That's it.
You don't need a reason. You don't need anything from them, and it doesn't have to turn into a long conversation.
Sometimes we get so busy with our own lives that we forget how much a few simple words can mean to somebody else.
If someone crossed your mind while you were reading this, maybe there's a reason.
Send the message.
TOY