t^ORTY-FOtfRTH ANNUAL REPORT. 133 



A, The eggs are black and shiny and are found in rough places on 

 the bark and stems. You will sometimes find stems just covered with 

 them. The punctures of the lice contain an irritant that keeps the apple 

 juice from coagulating and this makes the apples small. The red bugs 

 make apples smaller and knotty, while the plant louse produces a rough- 

 ness at the blow end. 



Q. Is the red bug found very extensively yet? 



A. I have never detected any except in that one section. 



Q. Is there any parasite that preys on them? 



A. Not that I know of, and if a few of these bugs are left on the 

 tree, they will make a lot of trouble. 



Q. Will nicotine spray help San Jose Scale? 



A. But very little. 



Q. Does the Green Aphis spend the winter with the little red ants? 

 That is, do the ants carry them down into their nests? 



A. No in neither case. 



Q. Does the Lady Bug do any damage at all? 



A. No, not at all. 



Q. How are the green plant lice different from the wool}- lice? 



A. Both are plant lice, but they are entirely different. 



Q. Is the Wooly Aphis destructive? 



A. Yes. 



Q. Will nicotine kill them? 



A. Yes, if you can hit them with it, and use plenty of soap. That is 

 of course the ones in the tops, not those on the roots. 



Q. How much? 



A. Two pounds to the barrel. 



Q. Has it proved practical and any better, to use water that is hot in 

 spraying? 



A. For experimental purposes we use hot water, but I don't think that 

 it has ever been followed up generalh^ 



Q. Do you think that if joii kill Wooly Aphis by sprajang that it 

 will again come back from the roots? 



A. Yes, you can kill them all from the tops, but if you do not do 

 anything more they will come right back again. You must spray more 

 than once. You must use quite a high pressure on these insects too, be- 

 cause they have this cottony coat and it is hard to get the poison down 

 onto them enough to take effect. 



We will now take up the next insect on our list. At the Traverse City 

 meeting I told you something about the parasites of the San Jose Scale. 

 Since then we have been collecting San Jose scales from all over the state, 

 putting them in cages and rearing the parasites. We have hundreds of 

 those cages, and the parasites would come to the light and crawl out in 

 the tubes of the cages. They are very small, but with a lens you can look 

 in and see them. AVe have found in Michigan, seven distinct species of 

 parasites working on the San Jose Scale. But even at that, it is not 

 going to pay you to send around and collect these different parasites 

 and put them on your orchard to combat the scale in that manner. We 

 have even found parasites that feed on these parasites, that is, 

 friends of the scale. These parasites may in some future day have 

 some effect upon the scale, but the things haven't got that far yet, and the 

 thing for use to do is to keep everlastingly spraying. There are not 



