Month: February 2023

 

 

Digging through the mailbag, I came across an inquiry from a budding nine-year-old naturalist who discovered an unusually large beetle larva that had expired on her driveway. The grub was none other than the back-walking larva of a turf pest known as the green June beetle. Like other larvae of the scarab beetle clan, green June beetle grubs use three pairs of legs on their thorax for short distance feeding sorties. But when it’s time to get up and really go, they move out of the soil and use a very bizarre form of locomotion – “walking” on their back. These wiggly critters have a series of stout hairs on the upper surface of their back. To move quickly above ground, the grub rolls on its back and with peristaltic motions it wriggles across the surface of the earth or a driveway. Dorsal hairs contact the substrate and provide ample traction for surprisingly rapid movement. The unfortunate star of this week’s episode likely emerged from turfgrass adjacent to an expansive driveway on an unusually warm December day. As temperatures plummeted from afternoon highs near sixty to post sunset lows in the thirties, the back-walker apparently was stranded and unable to regain the relative warmth of the soil. When our third-grader discovered the grub the following evening, with temperatures still below freezing, the larva had suffered the same ill fate as the Scott party in Antarctica. 

Using a backstroke even Michael Phelps would admire, a green June beetle larva races across my patio.

Most green June beetle grubs choose a slightly different path to follow. After feeding for several months near the surface of the earth, grubs, which may be an inch and a half long, burrow deeper underground to escape winter’s bitter cold. In spring as temperatures warm, larvae return to the upper stratum of the soil to resume feeding and complete development. Most of the damage caused by grubs results as they move to the surface of the soil to feed. Their burrows can be the diameter of your thumb and small mounds of soil often surround the burrows. The soil disruption caused by burrowing beetles creates problems on golf courses and in lawns. Soils with organic mulches and farm fields that receive applications of manure are highly attractive to the egg-laying females and may be loaded with grubs. 

On hot summer mornings, adult green June beetles zoom over the surface of lawns as they search for mates and sites to deposit eggs. While many beetles spread their hard outer wings to fly, green June beetles simply lift their hardened outer wings and extend membranous hind wings used for flight. The flight patterns and buzzing sounds of green June beetle adults are strongly reminiscent of large bumble bees. Perhaps, these behaviors are a clever way to ward off would-be predators that learned not to mess with large buzzing, stinging insects. Once a female locates a favorable spot, she burrows several inches into the earth, makes a large sticky ball of soil and proteinaceous goop (technical term), and deposits eggs in it. Eggs hatch in a few days into small C-shaped white grubs. During the day, white grubs rest in a burrow underground but at night they move to the surface of the earth to eat decaying organic matter. With some regularity in late summer and autumn, these rather large white grubs wind up on my patio or in the carport and perform their strange back-walking routine. 

Watch as green June beetles take flight, first at full speed and then slowed by 95%. See the unusual position of the wings where hard outer wings remain closed and membranous hind wings are extended outward and used for flight.

Unlike their more destructive relatives, Japanese beetles, Asiatic garden beetles, and Oriental beetles, green June beetles are not serious pests of roses, lindens, or other landscape plants. Their primary foods are thin-skinned fruits such as berries and grapes. I have also observed several adults congregating on a wounded tree to slurp fermenting exudates. Fresh fruit and fermenting beverages sound just fine on a warm summer’s day. Maybe these green June beetles are just a bit smarter than we think. 

Acknowledgements 

We thank nature-lover Eloise for sharing her beetle grub that was the inspiration for this episode. Much of the information for this Bug of the Week came from Daniel Potter’s excellent reference book “Destructive Turfgrass Pests” and the interesting article “Mimicry of Hymenoptera by Beetles with Unconventional Flight” by R.E. Silberglied and T. Eisner.

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This week we dip into the mailbag to see how ill-fated wasps can help create fascinating pottery when they select poor locations to build their nurseries. While performing an annual tune-up of a woodburning stove, an inquisitive homeowner discovered a strange foreign object in the bowels of the firebox. His first thought was that this might be a piece of cast iron slag or creosote accretion. Upon closer examination, he astutely identified the mass as a mud dauber nest that had been “fired” by the heat of his stove. With some remorse, he reflected on how many trips the mother wasp must have made up and down the fifteen-foot stovepipe to construct the nest, only to have her youngsters roasted alive in a stove. Well, to learn a little bit more about industrious mud daubers, let’s revisit an episode from 2017 about one of my favorite wasps, the black and yellow mud dauber.

“On a steamy day in Maryland, nothing beats a trip to one of our mighty rivers, the Potomac or Shenandoah. After a fierce hike on a scorching day, I stopped by the Shenandoah at Harper’s Ferry to cool my hot feet. Along the riverbank dozens of mud daubers discovered what must have been the perfect formulation of clay, minerals, and water to construct pottery homes for their young. In an amazing display of harmonized movements, mouthparts and legs of mud daubers formed spheres of glistening mud and airlifted mud balls to nearby human-made structures. Corners of window frames and doorjambs were perfect locations out of the rain to build pottery homes for their young. Nest construction by Sceliphron caementarium centers on creating a series of hollow mud chambers, provisioning each chamber with food, depositing an egg in each chamber, and sealing the mud tubes with a cap of mud to keep out weather, but more critically parasitoids and predators intent on making a meal of mud dauber larvae.

Watch as mud daubers use clever jaws and legs to shape mud into perfect balls ready to be airlifted to the nest construction site.

Just what are the provisions for babes of black and yellow mud daubers? Spiders, lots of them. Individual cells of mud daubers may contain as many as 25 spiders to serve as food for a single wasp larvae. Several species of web spinning and hunting spiders have been discovered in nests of mud daubers. One might think that spiders are pretty risky food for baby wasps but mother has a way to disarm these fanged prey. Female mud daubers deliver a venomous paralytic sting to the nerve center of the spider, rendering it immobile and harmless. These spiders are the ‘undead’. Sealed in clay coffins, spiders will be consumed alive one-by-one by the developing wasp larva. When the last spidery zombie in the chamber is consumed, the wasp larva pupates and later emerges as an adult ready to find a mate, build mud nests, and capture spiders for young of her own. Unlike the venom of hornets, yellowjackets or honey bees that is meant to inflict pain on vertebrates intent on robbing nests or hives, the venom of mud daubers is designed to paralyze prey and the sting of these docile wasps is reported to be mild by comparison, much like the sting of solitary bees we met in a previous episode.

The primary concern raised by these beautiful spider hunters is the aesthetic disfigurement of buildings where clay nests stuck on walls, doorjambs, eaves, and window frames can be very abundant. In an interesting twist to this mud dauber story, workers cleaning up a nuclear waste facility apparently found wasps gathering radioactive soil to build their nests and many of their creations were “fairly highly contaminated” with radioactive isotopes. Just imagine giant mutated wasps glowing in the dark, capturing small pets instead of spiders to provision their nests – sounds like reasonable grist for another B grade sci-fi movie about insects!” While the firing of a mud dauber nest might seem somewhat tragic, there is a reasonable chance that this nest was occupied in years past and that the larval chambers were empty. Mud daubers do not reuse former nests so maybe no carnage was involved. As our human friend concluded, he may simply be the proud owner of a “goofy conversation piece.”

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Andy Smith for sharing his story and images that inspired this episode. Paula Shrewsbury provided a great photograph of the black and yellow mud dauber. The wonderful Featured Creature Sheet “Common name: black and yellow mud dauber, scientific name: Sceliphron caementarium (Drury, 1773) (Insecta: Hymenoptera: Sphecidae)” by Erin Powell and Lisa Taylor, and “Radioactive wasp nests at Hanford reservation” by the Associated Press were used to prepare this story.

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Got a call a few weeks ago about white swamp lilies feeling the blues from a greenhouse grower. White swamp lilies, Crinum powellii album, are a spectacular member of the amaryllis clan known for their extremely fragrant white blossoms, which give them their common name.  While it can be planted outdoors in plant hardiness zones 6 – 11, at the northern edge of its range freezing temperatures cause dieback of above ground foliage. The white swamp lilies in question here also suffered above ground dieback of foliage, but resided in a campus greenhouse where temperatures were a balmy 65 degrees Fahrenheit or so. Ruling out the possibility of cold intolerance, a justifiably frustrated grower wondered why the sickly yellow and brown leaf color and decline of the lilies was happening. At first glance, silvery streaks and discolored patches of morbid leaf tissue necessitated a closer look. A peek through the 20X hand lens revealed a horde of tiny thrips cavorting, feasting, and despoiling the plant. A tentative identification of the culprit suggested this was the banded greenhouse thrips, a pest found outdoors in pantropical regions and in greenhouses around the world where it dines on a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, and ornamental plants, including lilies.

Thrips are strange little insects with an unusual name that is both singular and plural. Ten of these creatures are thrips, but a single individual is also a thrips. In addition to a strange name, they have equally strange and formidable mouthparts. A dagger like jaw punctures epidermal and parenchyma cells of the leaf and another set of mouthparts slurp up nutritious cell contents. Thrips feeding causes discolored areas of leaf tissue and sometimes silver streaks on the surface of a leaf. The immature stages of thrips, called larvae, are translucent and often yellow or whitish in color. They cannot fly and molt several times before transforming into winged adults capable of flight. Depending on the species, adults can be yellow to dark brown in color, as is the case with the fiends on our swamp lilies. Their tiny wings, lined with featherlike hairs, are the source of their Latin name, Thysanoptera, which means “feather wing”. 

This white swamp lily is really in the hurt locker with leaves yellowing and crumpling in a death wilt. Zooming in on a leaf, we see silver streaking and a row of tiny black adult thrips dining near a leaf vein. Herds of larval thrips, many wearing a black fecal droplet on their rear end, feed on leaf tissue. Watch the digestive tract of a thrips larva pulse and quiver as it imbibes liquids from a leaf. Nearby, an adult thrips seems more intent on grooming its antennae rather than dining on a leaf.

Female thrips can lay scores of eggs. Indoors where plants are warm and dry during winter months, thrips may complete multiple generations over the course of several weeks. In addition to damage caused as they feed, thrips leave behind little gifts in the form of black fecal deposits. These small treasures litter the surface of the leaf and collect on surfaces below the plant. A vigorous washing with a spray of water may dislodge some of the thrips and provide a modicum of relief. However, many species embed their eggs in the leaf tissue and these are unlikely to be dislodged by a spray. Many insecticides are available to kill thrips. One active ingredient that can be purchased by homeowners and professionals alike is spinosad. Derived from the soil inhabiting bacterium, Saccharopolyspora spinosa, spinosad is approved for use not only on greenhouse plants but also in the production of certified organic vegetables.

Ah, but a more natural and perhaps more entertaining way to manage them is to release hungry predators with a taste for thrips. Greenhouse growers manage these rascals by releasing predatory mites or minute pirate bugs that attack and eat thrips in a strategy called biological control. Another biological control tactic that has proven effective is to treat thrips with entomopathogenic (insect killing) nematodes. These tiny roundworms can be purchased and sprayed on the plant and underlying soil to kill developing thrips. The nematodes invade the body of the thrips and release a lethal bacterium. However, when plants are heavily infested with thrips, sometimes the best strategy is to say goodbye to the old ones, and “gift” yourself a new one.   

Acknowledgements

We thank Sam Bahr for discovering the thrips featured in this episode and Juang Chong, Dan Gilrein, Felipe Soto-Adames, Matt Bertone, Mark Hoddle, Frank Hale, and Stanton Gill for helping with the identity of this rascal. The fact-filled fact sheet by Ronald F.L. Mau and Jayma L. Martin was used to prepare this story.

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Discover the Signs of Mice in the Attic of Your Home and How to Prevent Infestations Once and for All

Are you dealing with a mice infestation in your attic? Catseye Pest Control helps homeowners remove mice from their homes, clean up the mess, and prevent future rodent infestations. 

Mice and other rodents invade more than 20 million American homes ever year, typically in search of warmth, shelter, and food. These fast-moving, destructive critters can squeeze through openings as tiny as a dime, making it easy for them to enter and exit homes.

They eat 15 to 20 times a day, can jump and climb with ease, making it easy for them to get into all kinds of trouble. Mice can invade every part of your home, but one of their favorite places to set up house is the attic.

Once inside, mice can cause significant destruction.

The Damage Mice Can Do to Attics

Mice may be tiny, but they create huge amounts of damage relatively quickly. In fact, mice and other rodents create millions of dollars of damageto homes and businesses every year.

Some of the destruction caused by these pests in attics includes torn and damaged insulation as they gnaw through it and make their nests inside. Insulation may also become contaminated with feces and urine.

Constant gnawing can also destroy parts of the structure in addition to valuables stored in the attic. Worse, mice are known to chew on just about anything — even electrical wires. Left unchecked, small nibbles can lead toelectrical shorts and possible fires.

These rodents also reproduce quickly. A single female can have a dozen babies every three weeks, turning a small problem into a huge infestation.

Mice are also known to make their way throughout homes, rather than staying in the attic. They can quickly and easily move into the walls and the crawlspace, widening the scope of their destruction.

Mice Rarely Stay in the Attic

Left undisturbed, mice will feel safe to move in permanently and roam throughout the structure.

In addition to building nests to have their young, they will inevitably spread out. They may move into walls, crawlspaces, basements, and other rooms — anywhere dark, quiet, and out of the way.

In the process, they will spread germs and possibly diseases while creating damage throughout more areas of the home.

Signs You Have a Mouse (or Mice) in the Attic

Like all rodents and other wildlife nuisances, mice in the attic leave telltale signs of their presence. If you suspect there is a mouse (or likely, mice) in your home, it’s critical to call for professional assistance. Although there are do-it-yourself efforts available, not properly handling the situation can lead to a bigger infestation if all of the critters are not removed.

 It can also lead to the spread of virus-containing particles — like Hantavirus, which can be spread through urine, droppings, or saliva-covered matter that is improperly moved or disposed of.

Some of the main signs of mice in the attic include odd noises, such as scratching or scampering overhead or behind walls. Mice tend to be more active at night, so keep an ear out in the evening, overnight, and early morning.

Look for rub and gnaw markson wood panels, furniture, and flooring. Nests made of insulation, paper, or cloth are common in attics, crawlspaces, walls, and basements infested with mice.Droppings will often be found near nests or areas with food.

Additionally, you might start smelling odors, including musky smells or urine.

Removal and Treatment

Knowing what to look for is half the battle. Developing a plan to remove invaders and keep them out is equally essential.

Catseye has a comprehensive mouse control program to eliminate the infestation. It also includes steps to clean and disinfect the mess they leave behind, and it offers permanent solutions to prevent future issues.

The faster you respond, the better. Because mice reproduce so quickly and can nest in out of the way areas, total elimination can be challenging. Working with experts in the field can help you regain control quickly.

Exclusion Systems Offer a Permanent Solution

To prevent mice from returning to the attic, and other parts of the home, it’s essential to identify how they are entering and seal off those entry points.

Catseye’s expert technicians can help with the process and recommend a permanent barrier. Cat-Guard Exclusion Systems work to provide complete, chemical-free defense for various zones of the home. Each all-natural, rigid barrier shields the home, guaranteeing permanent prevention for mice and nuisance wildlife.

• Upper Cat-Guard protects everything from the top of the first-floor windows to the peak of the roof.
• Lower Cat-Guard shields the home from the first-floor windows to ground level.
• Trench-Guard seals off low-clearance and subterranean areas like basements, decks, crawlspaces, and sheds.

Trust Catseye with Your Mouse Removal, Treatment, and Prevention Needs

Mice (and their droppings) can transmit serious diseases. Additionally, these small but persistent pests can do significant damage that won’t likely remain contained to the attic. Eventually, they will spread out to crawlspaces and other areas of the home.

Catseye has decades of experience and a commitment to not only meet but exceed your expectations, starting with our free, detailed inspection. Contact us today to schedule an appointment or to learn more.

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On a warm early winter day, while tidying up a screened porch, I happened upon a lovely cellar spider taking a stroll with its shadow along piece of misplaced lumber. Somehow, that old classic by Al Jolson, Billy Rose, and Dave Dreyer got stuck in my mind and wound up in the title of this episode, but here’s the rest of the story. Just beneath a nearby workbench rested a motley collection of exsanguinated arthropods including a field cricket, ground beetle, weevil, small millipede, and tiny wasp tangled in silk. Telltale white droplets of excrement beneath a loose silken web marked this as the graveyard of victims of a cellar spider. A few years ago, in late autumn with the holiday season fast approaching and family and friends soon to visit, the Bug Guy received orders to prepare the spare bedroom in the basement for overnight guests. Part of the assignment was to inspect windows and remove any arthropods living or dead that might terrorize visitors who do not share affection for animals lacking fur and possessing more than four legs. Near the corner of one dimly lit window, I discovered a diverse collection of tiny insect carcasses and didn’t have to look far to see a gangly and beautiful cellar spider hiding in the upper corner of the window.

With the late autumn sunlight at just the right angle, a cellar spider takes a stroll with its shadow along a piece of lumber near my workbench. High on an interior wall with her egg case snugly tucked beneath her body, a mother cellar spider rests. While she spends most of her time building webs, catching prey, or just chilling out, watch what happens when she is disturbed by a bug geek. Rock on spider, rock on! Rocking the web is believed to be an anti-predator behavior in cellar spiders and many of their kin.

Cellar spiders are found throughout much of the world in temperate and tropical regions. Millions of years ago cellars were noticeably absent from the planet but caves and dank tree hollows were aplenty and cellar spiders found these habitats perfect for building their loose webs for snaring prey. In the Land Down Under and in some other parts of the world, cellar spiders go by the name of daddy-long-legs, a moniker associated with another arachnid, opilionids, which we met in a previous episode.  I have handled cellar spiders and never been bitten and if this rare event did happen, the spider’s bite is reported to be harmless to humans. However, the cellar spider can bring down formidable spiders including Australian redbacks, kin to our black widow.

Mating is a curious affair in many spiders including Pholcus. Male cellar spiders deposit a droplet of sperm onto a small web, and then gather the droplet and store it in an appendage called the pedipalp. He then deposits the sperm into a cleft in the female’s abdomen where the sperm will be stored until the females uses the little wigglers to fertilize her eggs. Female cellar spiders are not necessarily “you and only you” kinds of gals and will often mate with more than one fella. In the spider mating game, it turns out that sperm from the last mating are the ones most likely to fertilize eggs. So, to ensure that he will be the proud father of spiderlings, the male removes sperm placed by his betrothed’s last suitor before he makes his deposit. What a guy. After all this drama, the female lays eggs and encases them in a thin cloak of silk. The egg bundle is toted about in their mother’s jaws to reduce the likelihood of being discovered and eaten by tiny predators. Like wolf spiders we met in a previous episode, tiny spiderlings also hitch a ride with mom for a short period of time after hatching.  If some winter cleaning is on your to-do list, before you attack those corners in the basement with vacuum or duster, take a moment to observe and maybe even enjoy these helpful predators. Or not.    

Acknowledgements

Bug of the Week thanks Dr. Jeffery Shultz for identifying the spider featured in this episode, Dr. Nancy Breisch, and the Bartley Raupp’s for providing inspiration and guidance for spider stories. Great references used to prepare this episode include “Daddy-long-legs Spider” by Dr. Mike Gray, and “Pholcus phalangioides” by Anna Ferrick.

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