Name the pest

Can someone name the pest on my hops. They look like aphids to me, but this is my 1st year, so I'm not sure. Note the leaves are brittle and curled up in the last photos.

Those are definitely aphids....haven't had them on my hops though. Maybe give them a good spraying with an insecticidal soap.

If you don't have any insecticidal soap, then just give them a hard blast with a hose. It will knock down the numbers until you get a chance to pick up some insecticidal soap.

Can't you buy ladybugs somehow or something? That'd kill them wouldn't it?

I just sprayed some off with a spray bottle and water. Hopefully enough to keep them off until I can pick up insecticidal soap. Looking at the the home improvement websites for stores in my area, I can go with Bayer Natria or Ortho Elementals. Does anyone have experience with these and know if they are safe for hops? I'd hate to waste 24 hours waiting to see if a test area turns out OK. Then again I'd hate to lose my whole crop because I killed it with insecticidal soap.

Coule be lace bugs. permethrin can be sprayed buy dont harvest for at least 2 weeks.

Lady bugs will definitely eat them. You can get them at any garden center.

Either of Bayer/Ortho will work just fine if you follow the directions on the label, and don't spray on a sunny afternoon. The soap will dissolve lots of the leaf's cuticle (waxy covering) and bright sun can damage the leaves for a few hours until the cuticle reforms. No need for permethrins when dealing with aphids around the house.

On a side note, those appear to be "Foxglove" aphids (Aulacorthum solani). Light body color and dark leg joints are a good visual clue. These are a species of aphids that cause more "distortion" than most. Still not a major issue, just makes the plant look funny. Just thought you might like to know why your plants look the way they do.

theredben said:

Either of Bayer/Ortho will work just fine if you follow the directions on the label, and don't spray on a sunny afternoon. The soap will dissolve lots of the leaf's cuticle (waxy covering) and bright sun can damage the leaves for a few hours until the cuticle reforms. No need for permethrins when dealing with aphids around the house.

On a side note, those appear to be "Foxglove" aphids (Aulacorthum solani). Light body color and dark leg joints are a good visual clue. These are a species of aphids that cause more "distortion" than most. Still not a major issue, just makes the plant look funny. Just thought you might like to know why your plants look the way they do.

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Thanks. That helps a lot. I picked up the Bayer this morning and tested it out on a leaf with some aphids. This evening, the leaf was fine, so I treated all of my bines. I didn't see any aphids this evening, so I think I caught it early enough to control it well.

Do you mean that the Foxglove aphids won't really be detrimental to my crop, but it just may look bad? For now that's not a big deal, but I would imagine that if they got in the cones, I would pretty much be screwed. Is that accurate?

I would be suprised if they decided that the cones were tasty. Aphids usually hang out on a leaf vien/stem to get access to the plant sap.

Aphids just suck the plants energy, not a big deal.

theredben said:

I would be suprised if they decided that the cones were tasty.

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I was surprised as well, but aphids are 'CREEPS' when they go unchecked. Early on, I had a few years when they were real bad but saw all the ladybugs and figured that they'd just get fat and that would solve the problem. Aphids can multiply a lot quicker than the ladybugs so guess who won. When picking, I noticed a bunch of dark grey/black spots between the bracts and after asking around found out that it was 'Sooty Mold' which developed due to the 'honeydew' the aphids exude. I brewed with them and no one knew the difference. If they were commercial hops they would probably have received a low grade when tested but I don't think the quality was lessened too much. They're CREEPS I tell ya', CREEPS!

Aphids are terrible for hops It is a really big deal I fight them w benificial insects.Lady bugs,wasps,lace wings,preying mantis.It is important to get the timing right.Cool damp weather brings them out

Hopfarmer said:

Aphids are terrible for hops It is a really big deal I fight them w benificial insects.Lady bugs,wasps,lace wings,preying mantis.It is important to get the timing right.Cool damp weather brings them out

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The insecticidal soap and spraying with water is working OK, but they keep coming back in small numbers within about a day. I think I'm going to try ladybugs in addition. Do you introduce ladybugs to your crop, or to you attract them naturally somehow? Any tips on using ladybugs would be much appreciated.

jescholler said:

The insecticidal soap and spraying with water is working OK, but they keep coming back in small numbers within about a day. I think I'm going to try ladybugs in addition. Do you introduce ladybugs to your crop, or to you attract them naturally somehow? Any tips on using ladybugs would be much appreciated.

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you can buy them at your local nursery. i've heard of spritzing them with a very dilute cola solution to limit their flight until they're established in your garden. no website seems to be backing me up in this, so i may be wrong.

these two sites have a little more info,
http://insects.about.com/od/insectpests/f/ladybug_releases.htm
http://www.beneficialinsects101.com/ladybugs.html

EDIT: "should I spray sugar water on lady bug wings?" I guess i was wrong, but the other two sites had some good tips on encouraging lady bugs to stick around.

Lady bugs are amazing. I had an aphid problem last year. I bought two packages of lady bugs from orchard, and the aphids were gone in about a week and a half.

I must be a lucky guy. My aphid control isn't working, and I see I have spider mites. As I reported earlier, I was spraying the aphids off, multiple times daily and using insecticidal soap. Neither were working all that well, so I decided to release ladybugs. I figured the aphid population had to be tempting to the ladybugs, so I let it build up for a couple days. Then I released about 200 ladybugs. I made sure to do it at night and sprayed the leaves first. Well by morning, the ladybugs were gone, but on a positive note, there was no sign of aphids. But the aphids were back within a day, and my hops had taken a beating from the aphids. The leaves were in bad shape and the growth had slowed considerably.

So I went back to the old methods, the soap and water. They partially worked as usual. Then 1 week after my 1st ladybug release, I released the remainder of the 15,000 (there were a bunch of dead ones though). This time, I sprayed them with a 50/50 cola water solution to "glue" their wings. That worked better than the 1st time, and the ladybugs stuck around for about 48 hours (however, most were gone in 24, and at about 36 there were only 5 left). Now the ladybugs are gone and the aphids are back pretty strong. Last night when there were about 5 ladybugs left, I sprayed my hops with a sugar solution in attempt to keep the existing ladybugs and possibly attract new ones. I didn't spray the ladybugs though. Apparently that didn't work. I'm still spraying with sugar water though because I figure it can't hurt, and it knocks off a few aphids.

In addition to the things I've already mentioned, I have had a yellow plastic container half filled with water to trap some aphids. That worked OK, and usually 10 a day or so would fall for that.

I know there are a lot of other things I can do, but what has the best chances of working? Help!!! My spirits are low.

Just to inform everyone regarding ladybugs:

Please do not buy this product from your local garden centre. Ladybugs are most commonly harvested from the wild with no oversight from any wildlife scientists. This is a practice that, while it seems harmless, could cause devastating results as the popularity of "organic" gardening picks up. We just really do not know. I am not pointing fingers at anyone in this thread, I realize how popular these insects are. I just want to spread the message that, for the limited effectivness (read: the fly away overnight without eating any aphids), they may be causing far more harm to the environment then we are aware of.

I wanted to provide an update on this thread for others with this problem. Around mid-July, the aphids started to disappear. I don't know if this had anything to do with it, but following a hail storm, the aphid numbers dropped significantly. A few days after that, they were completely gone. Now the hops are going strong.

Prior to the hail storm, I found that the best method to battle the aphids was soap water. I used Dr. Bronner's soap at a rate of 1 tsp. to 32 oz. of water (1%). Some say that you're not supposed to use dish soap, but as far as I understand, the Dr. Bronner's is OK. I don't remember the exact reasons though. It's much cheaper if you're spraying a lot (about $0.06 per 32 oz spray bottle). When the aphids were strong, I was spraying every other day. I found that was enough to keep the aphid count low enough to not stunt the hops. For a while I was spraying every day, but I may have been seeing come discoloration on the leaves, so I backed off a bit.

Long story short, my hops are going strong. Spraying with Dr. Bronner's soap was my best method for fighting aphids. Eventually they just went away though. It could have been the hail storm, heat, or maybe something better started to grow and they went there.