How do you fight the red mealybug?

Image – entnemdept.ufl.edu

Palm trees are generally very resistant plants, but when the cultivation is not entirely suitable they can be affected by various insects and parasites, one of them being the red mealybug.

It is a relatively new pest in the United States and Spain: the former arrived in 1985 and the latter in the 1990s. How do you fight? If you want to know, in this article we are going to talk about it.

What is it?

The red palm scale, whose scientific name is Phoenicococcus marlatiis native to North Africa. It is a hemiptera that feeds on the sap of the plant. It goes through three stages of development: egg, nymph, and adult. The female has atrophied legs, so it always remains on the plant tissues surrounded by a white cottony secretion that fades over time.

How do I know if my palm tree has it?

If we want to know if our palm tree has red mealybugs, what we will have to do is see the following:

Yellowing and subsequent whitening of the leaves
General weakening of the plant
Growth slowdown
To the mealybugs themselves
If the attack is very strong it can cause death in phoenix roebelinii

How do you fight?

Once we have detected that it has red cochineal, what we should do is treat the palm tree. To do this, we can choose to:

Remove them by hand or with a brush soaked in drugstore alcohol.
Treat them with an anti-mealybug insecticide following the indications specified on the product packaging.
Treat them with diatomaceous earth (The dose is 35g for each liter of water). Of course, we must bear in mind that it will take a while – a couple of days – to notice its effects, so it is only recommended when the plague has not yet spread. You can buy it here!.