Emerald Ash Borer

• Adult beetles are metallic green and about 1/2 inch long

• Prefer stressed ash trees, but can infest unstressed

• Serpentine larval feeding galleries found immediately under the bark

Adult lace bugs are typically 1/10th of an inch long and cream-colored. They have lacy wings dotted with black and brown patches or bands. The eggs are 0.02 in long and usually laid on the midrib or leaf margins of young leaves; they are covered with a dark brown adhesive material that forms a hard protective covering.

Bagworms feed on a variety of deciduous and evergreen plants including arborvitae, juniper, spruce, pine, maples, sycamores and numerous others. Evergreen trees and shrubs cannot recover from complete defoliation; whereas deciduous trees usually develop new leaves following defoliation.

Bark beetles have hard, smooth, stout bodies and range from 1.3 to 2.9 mm in length, depending on gender and species. The majority of bark beetles are female; males are smaller and flightless. Adult beetles can be reddish brown or black in color, while larvae are white and legless.

The Box Tree Moth (BTM) caterpillars are green and hairy, with black stripes and white dots. They grow to about 1 to 2 inches. Adults are white with a thick brown border on the wings and are active at night.

Box Tree Moth (BTM), an exotic invasive insect that is under quarantine in Delaware, has now been found in multiple locations in Kent County. Scout your boxwood plants for damage like the photos below. If you find BTM damage, please follow the protocol below for reporting.

Cereal Leaf Beetle: Overwintering adults emerge in mid-March and begin to lay eggs after 2 to 3 weeks of feeding. Since females prefer to lay eggs on young plants, spring-planted oats and late-planted wheat are the predominant hosts. 

Cereal rust mite adults are small measuring less than one millimeter (mm), and for the first time observer a 10-20X hand lens is needed to see them.

Crape myrtle bark scale begins its life cycle as tiny, pink to purple colored crawlers, which subsequently produce a fuzzy white waxy cover. Females remain sessile under the cover, whereas males pupate and leave their covers as a tiny, pink, gnat-like insect with wings 

This soft scale feeds on crabapple, sweetgum, star magnolia, honey locust, maple, dogwood, elm, oak, pear, redbud, tulip tree, all stone fruit trees, and many other species of trees.

The Dectes stem borer (DSB) is a longhorn beetle that is native to North America, and feeds on many wild and some cultivated plant species. 

Diagnosing horticultural plant problems is similar to being a detective. The investigator must collect and evaluate all clues, keep good notes, establish the facts, and synthesize them into a conclusion. Take adequate representative samples and keep collected samples in good condition. Have an open mind and don't assume that the current problem is the same as another similar one.

Dogwood Sawfly is an insect pest that can affect dogwood plants in summer. Sawflies are from the order Hymenoptera (same as ants, bees, and wasps). There are many types of sawflies, like the rose slug and hibiscus sawfly, and immatures feed on many common landscape plants.

The eastern tent caterpillar is a pest native to North America and is usually found in the eastern part of the U.S. It is commonly found on wild cherry, apple, and crabapple. It can also be found on maple, cherry, peach, hawthorn, pear, and plum, ash, birch, black gum, willow, poplar and oak.

Gloomy Scale Insect: Spends winter as a female beneath protective coverings in bark, and in spring, resumes development by feeding via piercing-sucking mouthparts until she lays eggs underneath her tests. Eggs hatch sometime in late Juneand crawler activity may continue for 4 to 6 weeks.

Grass Sawfly - Adult sawflies emerge in early April, mate and begin to lay eggs in the leaf margins of small grains. Most egg laying is complete by early May.

Gather tools that will help you acquire a sample, cutters, small shovel, hand lens, plastic bags, marker, etc. Go to the field with an open mind and investigate all possibilities!

Insecticide efficacy rankings based on consensus of Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Southern entomologists.

Galls are caused by the feeding or egg-laying of insects and mites. Upon feeding or egg-laying, hormones from the arthropod are released, which tell the plant to grow a protective mass, which is the “gall”. This mass then either grows around the feeding damage or surrounds the egg. Once surrounded the arthropod has the food and protection needed to mature.

The Japanese beetle, Popillia japonica, is an introduced pest of turfgrass and other plants. Japanese beetle grubs destroy turfgrass roots. Affected turfgrass turns brown and can easily be pulled up from the ground.

Kissing bugs are insects that feed on blood from animals and people. They are native to Delaware and live in wooded areas.

Lady Beetle Overview

• In the order Coleoptera

• Beneficial predators

• Usually red/orange with black spots

Magnolia scale is one of the largest soft scales found in the U.S. and feeds on the sap of magnolias, particularly star magnolia, lily magnolia, cucumber tree magnolia, and saucer magnolia. Tuliptree scale is often misidentified as magnolia scale, but it feeds on tulip tree (yellow poplar), magnolias, and sometimes lindens.

July and August in the vegetable garden typically bring bountiful harvests of colorful vegetables. These are also the months when insect pests can really make their presence known, with plant and fruit damage becoming increasingly noticeable. 

July and August in the vegetable garden typically bring bountiful harvests of colorful vegetables. These are also the months when insect pests can really make their presence known, with plant and fruit damage becoming increasingly noticeable. 

July and August in the vegetable garden typically bring bountiful harvests of colorful vegetables. These are also the months when insect pests can really make their presence known, with plant and fruit damage becoming increasingly noticeable. 

July and August in the vegetable garden typically bring bountiful harvests of colorful vegetables. These are also the months when insect pests can really make their presence known, with plant and fruit damage becoming increasingly noticeable. 

Where ants were collected and identified by a taxonomist, they have come back as ‘Pavement Ant’ – Tetramorium immigrans. However, several other species of ants are known to occasionally damage healthy vegetation, especially fire ants (Solenopsis spp., esp. S. invicta and S. richteri) further south and Allegheny mound ants (Formica exsectoides). Several Formica species are known to occasionally clear ground and prevent seedling establishment within several yards of their mounds.

What Pollinators Do For Us

• Pollinators are critical to our food production system

• More than 100 U.S.-grown crops rely on pollinators

• The Honey Bee is our primary pollinator

Written by: Emma Giancola- Ornamental Extension Entomology Intern
Brian Kunkel- Ornamentals IPM Extension Specialist University of Delaware

Sweet corn is one of the few crops for which insect pests drive most of the pest management program. A number of caterpillar pests attack sweet corn, infesting ears and rendering the ear and the whole planting unmarketable. In addition, caterpillars will also attack whorl stage sweet corn, and other insect pests can occasionally cause economic damage by themselves to the ears. This document focuses on the primary sweet corn pest, the corn earworm. 

Pulvinaria scale is a broad term for any species of scale in, or formerly in, the genus Pulvinaria. This includes the cottony maple scale (formerly Pulvinaria innumerabilis, now Neopulvinaria innumerabilis), the cottony maple leaf scale (Pulvinaria acericola) and the cottony camellia scale (Pulvinaria floccifera).

Roseslug sawflies are wasps with an immature stage that feeds on the underside of rose leaves. The immature insect looks like a caterpillar but is difficult to see because it is greenish-yellow in color.  We have three species in the mid-Atlantic, and they are the bristly rose sawfly, the roseslug sawfly, and the curled rose sawfly, which is covered in bristles.

Soybean Cyst Nematode (SCN) is the most yield limiting pathogen of soybeans across the US. Often referred to as a “silent yield robber”, SCN may be present and reducing yield without notable aboveground symptoms

Five major soil insects can be found in corn fields: seed corn maggot, white grubs, wireworms, cutworms and rootworms. Corn rootworm populations have increased in continuous corn production areas of New Castle and northern Kent counties. 

Common Name: Grass Spider

Scientific Name: Agelenopsis

Characteristics:

• Cave-like web

• Fast speed

• Yellowish-brown color.

The twospotted spider mite (TSSM) is a plant-feeding mite that is an extremely widespread pest affecting nearly all crop plants (over 1000 plant species). TSSM is very small in size and requires magnification to see clearly. 

The winter grain mite (WGM), as its name implies, is a cool season pest of small grains and orchard grass.