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Subject: Re: Beneficial Insects
From: mogo@xelph.com (Maureen)
Organization: MindSpring Enterprises
Date: Sat, 06 Nov 99 17:35:14
Message-ID: <MOD$991106.11208@rec.gardens.ecosystems>
References: <MOD$991019.10583@rec.gardens.ecosystems> <MOD$991103.12568@rec.gardens.ecosystems>



Are you sure that all of the predatory wasps have died? Perhaps they have
moved north, and will return as the population of psyllids increases.
Last spring, I took an entomology class in which we sampled several
cuttings of infested Eugenia. (In the Bay Area) Sure enough, there were
many predatory wasps parasitizing the psyllids. It may be that you are
simply in the upper swells of your plsyllid population curve, and that
they wasps will begin pressuring the population next year.

Best of luck!

Maureen
Bay Area Sone 9

>Bill Robinson wrote:
>
>> We have an interesting situation involving the use
>> of beneficial insects in Southern California.
>>
>> We use a lot of Eugenia as an evergreen hedge. It
>> grows well in our climate and up to a few years ago,
>> it was essentially trouble-free. There are a number
>> of different species of Eugenia listed in Hortus and
>> I'm not sure which species is the one sold in most of
>> our nurseries - probably E. uniflora.
>>
>> It then began to have problems with a psyllid. The
>> story is that Disneyland was also using a lot of Eugenia
>> and they worked at finding a solution to their psyllid
>> problem. They imported a predatory wasp from
>> Australia that feeds on this particular psyllid and for a
>> while it looked like they had solved the psyllid problem
>> for Southern California. The psyllid population dropped
>> off, I guess the predatory wasps then died of starvation,
>> and now, once again, we have a psyllid problem on our
>> Eugenias.
>>
>> Do we have to go back to square one and wait for
>> Disneyland to import more wasps from Down-Under?
>>
>> Bill
>>
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