ALFALFA WEEVIL. 9 
HABITS OF THE WEEVIL. 
WHERE AND HOW THE WEEVILS PASS THE WINTER. 
When cold weather comes on the adult weevils creep down close 
to the ground and into crevices and spend the winter there. Some 
ditch banks and other uncultivated places which are strewn with the 
litter of dead vegetation harbor many of them, but these numbers 
are an insignificant part of those which remain in the fields and 
deposit eggs the following spring. Burning the grass and weeds in 
such places, therefore, while desirable in itself, gives practically no 
protection to the crop in neighboring fields. 
Many weevils die in the fields during zero weather, but milder 
winter temperatures seem to have little effect upon them. Since 
bare ground freezes more than that which is covered by snow, it is 
sometimes advisable to cultivate the field in the fall, so that the 
snow which falls upon it may melt and expose the weevils as much 
as possible to the cold. 
Owing to the fact that most-of the weevils spend the winter on the 
eround in the fields, it is possible to kill them by flooding the field 
with muddy water and thus covering it with sediment. 
There is no definite hibernation in this species. The adults are 
quiet when it is cold and active when it is warm. <A female taken 
from the frozen fields will feed immediately and oviposit in a few 
hours after being brought into a warm room. 
EARLY SPRING ACTIVITY OF THE WEEVILS. 
The readiness with which the weevils resume their activities when 
subjected to.warmth has an important bearing upon control measures. 
The weevils lay scattered eggs in early spring, many weeks before the 
regular laying season, and deposit numbers of eggs in the dry stems 
on the ground even before they begin climbing up the green plants 
and feeding upon them. Larve hatching from these eggs, with those 
from eggs laid under similar circumstances the previous fall, some- 
times attack the plants in numbers large enough to cause serious 
injury to the crop before the majority of the eggs have been laid, par- 
ticularly in years when there is an early spring. This early activity 
must be taken into account in any attempt to protect the first crop. 
The fact that the adults feed rather freely for several weeks in 
early spring while the plants are small is the basis for attempts to 
destroy them by spraying with arsenical poisons. There is no dan- 
ger of poisoning the live stock which may eat the hay, because the 
plants are too small at the time of spraying to hold much poison, and 
this early growth forms but a small portion of the hay crop. The 
amount of poison contained in hay from fields which have been 
sprayed only three weeks before cutting is too small to have any 
effect upon the most sensitive animals. The feeding of the adults 
is done chiefly after the usual time for the dormant spraying of 
orchards and before the early codling-moth spraying, and therefore 
