398 



Kansas State Board of Agriculture. 



a hopperdozer of a special type. One style consists of a strip of sheet 

 iron coated with coal tar. The apparatus is drawn over the field after 

 the crop has been cut, and the insects, hopping at its approach, fall upon 

 the surface coated with tar, and thus many are killed. 



THE ALFALFA-SEED OR CLOVER-SEED CHALCIS-FLY. 



(Bruchophagus funebris How.) 



The adult is a small, four-winged, wasp-like insect, compact in form, 

 less than one-tenth of an inch long, black in color. (Fig. 347.) The 

 larva is a tiny grub that lives in the ripening seeds of alfalfa or 

 clover. 



FIG. 348. Work of the clover- 

 seed chalcis-fly in alfalfa seed. 



no. 347. Ctever- <A " er HeadUe ' ^ E * p - Sta -> 



seed chalcis-fly (Bru- 

 chophagus funebris). 

 Adult; 15 times 

 natural size. (After 

 Headlee, Kan. Exp. 

 Sta.) , 



Distribution. 



This insect, a native of the Old World, probably occurs over the en- 

 tire United States wherever its food plants are grown. It formerly de- 

 voted its attention to clover seed, but of recent years has proved very 

 serious on alfalfa seed, and is causing a large annual loss. 



Habits and Life History. 



The chalcis-fly hibernates or passes the winter as a full-grown larva 

 within alfalfa seeds, on the ground, in neglected fields and along fence 

 lines and ditch banks. Many of them are also found in the alfalfa seed 

 pods left in the field in removing the crop, and in the screenings around 

 alfalfa straw stacks. The adults emerge in the latter part of spring or 

 in early summer, and the females deposit or insert their eggs in the 

 young seed at the time it is in a semifluid state, and the tiny grub, as it 

 develops, consumes the contents of the seed. (Fig. 348.) It undergoes 

 its pupal transformations within the seed and emerges as an adult 

 through a little opening in the seed shell. The second generation of 

 adults appear about the middle of August and lay their eggs in the sec- 

 ond or third growth. Some adults from these appear the same season, 

 and the rest not until the following year. There are at least two gener- 

 ations a year, and probably a third. 



