If you dont have them too bad and theyre little it might be harder to find some in the daylight. If you do it will probably be under the leaves.
Look for some suspect damage on a leaf. If you cant see any thrips on the top look underneath.
When theyre little they tend to stay on top of the leaf in a crease in the dark cycle so it helps to look for them at night. When the lights come on you will see them scatter and hide under the leaf next to the stem
These will clear up and prevent thrips, fungus gnats and others very well. You can see the soil mites in the video, the cucumeris are small and harder to see.
Edit: also good for spider/broad mites.
I’m not familiar with that Soil Mite, I am US based and after some brief research it seems that particular variety of Soil Mite is related to the more commonly available Stratiolaelaps but is native to Canada? How cool!
The one in the white tube are soil mites and the cucumeris are for in the foliage.
tip: sulfur either distributed through a sulfur burner or sprayed has worked the best of anything for me and is the cheapest
Hey I hope all is well with you, any chance getting this info? I use beneficisl and it would be great to be able to keep reproducing them.
Hey Man, apologies for the late response. Did you still want some help getting things set up? Which insect are you looking to Bank, Orius Insidiosus?
If you went ahead with it already, hows it going?
Surprised Lacewing wasn’t mentioned.
The only thing I found effective against onion thrips was Lacewing.
Lacewing’s are great and I really like them but when it comes to getting a population established in a space it can be very difficult since the adults that will lay the eggs have very limited diets and are pretty fragile. Even regular applications of Zerotol can make it difficult for them to reproduce, not to mention difficulty in bringing the eggs to term.
I got some of these and I can see they are already re populating since the younger ones are orange color, but I would for sure be interested in hearing your banking method.
Would be great to hear your rearing techniques
It basically just revolves around giving them an alternative food source in the event that their prey population drops. I’m not sure your exact situation, but when I want to set up bankers for Orius I use the ornamental pepper Purple Flash ; they’re very easy to care for, aesthetically pleasing, and can be grown in hanging baskets and placed very close to the area you want the Orius to operate in. They’re able to get alot of the nutrition that they need from the flower pollen and that particular variety is very vigorous. I’ve also supplemented the diet of Orius with Ephestia eggs, which are sold under the brand name Bug Food E from Bioline I believe. You can put those into release boxes and spread them throughout your crop.
