Insects

A reader from southeast of Saskatoon emailed this question: I had a field with bertha armyworms on the perimeter in 2017. Numbers were not quite enough to reach spray thresholds, but very close. (I likely should have sprayed the perimeter.) My plans are to seed the field next to it to canola this year. Will this second field likely have…

A heavily-infested field in western Manitoba (south of Riding Mountain National Park) generated a lot of interest on Twitter in the past week. It prompted a lot of scouting, which is good. But what this one field and the ensuing scouting demonstrated is that bertha armyworm population spikes can be highly localized…

Bertha armyworm adult moth counts were generally low across the Prairies in 2017. A few trap sites did enter the moderate risk level, but none was high. See provincial counts in the Prairie Pest Monitoring Network blog. However, as experienced with diamondback moth trap counts this year, egg survival could be higher in dry conditions and warm weather will promote…