In every garden, in the country or in the garden, or rather in any suburban area, you can find a huge number of insects, which is not surprising: this is their habitat. Some species are not dangerous for people and plants, others can cause significant damage to plantings. One of these insects is the green bug.
Pest features
Officially, insects of this species are called forest tree bugs. The people called the insect a stink bug. This name comes from the strong smell that remains wherever the bug has crawled. And the scent stays for a long time. Tree bugs do not eat berries, but their smell becomes the reason that it is impossible to use the crop: if a green bug settles on raspberries, the aroma and taste of the fruit will be completely spoiled.
The body of an adult tree shield bug is oval and wide, and the head is small, with long antennae and a proboscis. A dense shell, which consists of individual scales, reliably protects the insect. The color of the bug changes depending on the season: in early spring it is light green, like youngthe leaves on the trees become dark green towards autumn, and when the leaves begin to turn yellow, its color changes to brownish yellow. Thus, the color serves as a defense against predators.
Reproduction
The stink bugs lay eggs twice during the season. They choose to place their offspring on the inside of the sheets. After two weeks, the larvae emerge from the eggs and immediately begin to feed. The juice of the leaves serves as food for young individuals. To get it, the larva pierces the leaf with a sharp proboscis, sucks out the juice from it, instead of which it lets in poison. Getting inside the leaf, the poison leads to its withering. After that, the affected parts of the leaves dry up, break off and crumble. If there are a lot of such leaves on the plant, it will dry out - this is what can happen if a green bug settles on the site. The photo above perfectly demonstrates the consequences of his activities.
The larvae of each stage of generation (there are 5 in total) are covered with a hard shell. To move to the next stage, you need to get out of the shell, and this is quite difficult. Therefore, not all larvae manage to survive to adulthood. Even more larvae die from birds and predatory insects, which also significantly reduces their population. Thus, their number is rarely so large that it can cause the death of bushes and trees.
The situation is quite different in the fields where cereal crops grow: the green bug causes the cereals to stop fruiting and then may die.
Habitat
The green bug lives throughout Europe. He lives wherever trees and shrubs grow. Gardens, forest plantations, green lawns are places where you can meet the pest. But even if he himself is not visible, damaged leaves will tell you that this insect lives here.
Most often affected are raspberry bushes, currants, gooseberries. If they are not nearby, then they serve him food:
- juicy herbs;
- deciduous trees;
- any berry bushes;
- cereals.
Preventive measures
To significantly reduce the number of tree shield insects, even agrotechnical measures often help. To do this, you just need to find out the features of their wintering: shield insects hide under fallen leaves and remain there until the cold weather passes. As soon as the heat comes, the starving insects with redoubled energy begin to eat everything that is available to them and acceptable as food. But if in the fall, just before the frost, you remove the fallen leaves along with other plant debris and burn it all, the number of stink bugs remaining on the site will be minimal. According to experienced gardeners, if you also dig up the soil, then next year there will hardly be at least one green garden bug on the site. There are other ways to remove the stink bug from the site.
Mechanical removal
In other words, you need to collect the insects with your hands. This is the most harmless way, but it is ineffective: it is difficult to see an insect in the green foliage of the same color. Moreover, find masonrythere are very few chances of eggs, so it is unlikely that the number of stink bugs will decrease on the site with this method of dealing with them. In addition, you need to constantly collect the tree shield, as new insects will appear, and if they are not removed, the number of pests will increase.
Use of folk remedies
The advantage of this method of eliminating the wood shield is complete safety for all living things, from people to plants. It is also important for many and a small cost. The disadvantages include the low effectiveness of home remedies, since the green bug does not die from them, but simply leaves the site for a while. To prevent insects from returning back, it is necessary to repeat the treatment periodically.
To remove pests, you need:
- Dissolve dry mustard powder (10:1) in cool water and spray all plants immediately.
- Infuse onion peel for 5 days. To do this, take 200 grams of husk for 10 liters of hot water. Mix and set aside. Processing should be carried out 3 times a day with a break of 5 days.
- Make a tincture of bitter wormwood and treat infected plants if green currant bugs are found, for example.
- To scare away the pest, use the black cohosh plant (cimicifuga) - plant it in different places on the site.
Other ways to fight
How to get rid of green bugs on plants if there are a lot of pests?Both methods described above in such cases cannot have the expected effect, so you will have to turn to the help of chemistry. Although there are currently no insecticides designed to kill the tree stink bug, there are other means that will help clear the area of pests. All of them differ in the mechanism of action and in how they penetrate the body of insects:
- Contact. Used most often. Means penetrate into the body if the drug comes into contact with any part of the body of the pest.
- Intestinal. Insecticides of this type begin to affect bed bugs only after entering their digestive system.
- System. This type of drug penetrates into plant tissues, after which the leaf-eating stink bugs die.
Specialists advise choosing insecticides depending on the situation and starting to exterminate the wood shield bug only when its numbers really begin to pose a threat to the site.
Means for the destruction of tree bugs
Because the stink bug is not included in the list of dangerous insects, today there are no drugs designed to destroy this particular type of pest. The most popular in this case are broad-spectrum organophosphorus drugs:
- "Fufanon".
- "Phosphamide".
- "Actellik".
- "Karbofos".
The benefits of their use includehigh efficiency - 1-2 treatments of affected plants are enough to clear the garden of tree bugs. The disadvantage of this method is the high cost and toxicity of drugs: they are dangerous for both people and animals, and they also poison the soil and grown products. They destroy chemicals and beneficial insects, so their use is not always justified. But this is not the main thing - after a few treatments, the green bug does not respond to the drug, since resistance occurs.
