150 ORCHARD INSECTS 



a few days to reach maturity and as each adult female will 

 produce several youug in a day, they increase with great rapidity. 

 This makes their control a serious matter. 



Control. — Now, what shall be done to check this insect? 

 As already suggested, in the general discussion, this is a sucking 

 insect and must be killed by a contact poison; that is every 

 insect must he hit to be killed. "When we remember how well 

 they are protected and how rapidly they increase, the difficulty 

 of controlling them may be realized. It is realized still more 

 fully after we have tried to fight them. Nothing but the 

 most thorough treatment will be effective, for if only a few 

 individuals are left after a spraying they will increase so 

 rapidly that in a very few days things are as bad as ever. 



The best time to fight the aphis is in the early stages, as soon 

 as possible after it hatches. If some treatment could be devised 

 to destroy the eggs in winter, that would be the ideal method. 

 It has often been suggested that the winter spraying with oil or 

 lime-sulfur might be effective, but there is much doubt in regard 

 to this. Orchards which had been sprayed every year for four 

 years with oil and lime-sulfur were as badly infected with aphis 

 as the most neglected orchard in the neighborhood. 



The best treatment seems to be to delay the spring applica- 

 tion of lime-sulfur (using it at the rate of one gallon to about 

 eight or nine of water) until just as the buds are breaking and 

 after the aphids have hatched. If the right time can be selected 

 after all the aphids are hatched and before the leaves are out 

 enough to be damaged or to allow the aphids to crawl in among 

 them and thus be protected, and if the work is done thoroughly 

 enough to destroy this first generation, then there will be no 

 future generations. Later treatment, when needed, must con- 

 sist in using some one of the contact sprays, either as a separate 

 spray or combined with the arsenical sprays which are given for 

 codling moth. On the Pacific coast, where these insects are 

 troublesome and where there is a form which does not curl the 

 leaves, it is the usual custom to combine a tobacco preparation 

 with the poison and the fungicide of the regular sprayings and 

 thus kill both types of insects and the fungous diseases. 



