Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 25, 1995 TAG: 9507250067
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
Those are the tiny, white beasties sucking the life out of the beautiful hemlock trees in Fugate's Harvey Street yard. And not just there, but across the New River Valley and Blue Ridge Mountains.
Introduced to the United States from Asia some 70 years ago, the hemlock woolly adelgid reached this region several years ago. In other parts of Virginia, such as Shenandoah National Park, the adelgid has devastated shady hemlock stands.
Fugate doesn't want that to happen to the stately trees at the front of her home, or to the younger ones that screen her back yard.
That's why she turned to 72,000 of the orange, spotted and hopefully hungry beetles of nursery-rhyme fame.
The release of a pound of mail-order ladybugs Friday evening turned into a neighborhood event. Call it Radford's brush with beetlemania, but without moptopped musicians wanting to hold your hand (anyone under 25, consult with your parents for allusion assistance).
It's 5:30. Cars pull up to the curbside in the turn-of-the-century neighborhood. Children jump out, followed by adults. Fugate's children, Maggie Holliman, 12, and Will Holliman, 10, sell lemonade and Popsicles.
Some onlookers arrive armed with a quip.
"I want to know who's going to count these things to make sure you got what you paid for," jokes Frank Taylor, a Radford High biology teacher.
"Word travels fast in Radford," says Bridgette Crigler, as the crowd grows.
Finally, the main event. Carl Mitchell, owner of Thornton's Greenhouses & Snowville Nursery in Hiwassee, rounds the corner. He's a neighbor of Fugate's who ordered the bugs for her and is going to apply them at cost, about $60 (it would be $80 usually). He's holding the ladybird beetles, or Hippodamia convergens. They're crawling around inside a breathable bag that's inside a cardboard box that arrived by Priority Mail the day before from Buena Biosystems in Ventura, Calif. (Local suppliers were fresh out.)
The crowd, by now up to about 25, applauds.
Mitchell opens the box and unties the bag. Some of the bugs fly out. Others, he places onto adelgid-infested hemlock branches. The bugs crawl over the ground, up arms, even up a pant leg. (Mild-mannered reporter dances jitterbug; see film at 11.)
They seem to be going right to work on the adelgids, which resemble little white puffs at the base of the hemlock needles.
"They're all different sizes and numbers of dots," notes parent Margaret Wiley. "I always wondered what the dots mean."
Mitchell starts a minilecture for the benefit of the children, who seem fascinated by the whole to-do. Or mostly fascinated.
"Nasty," shudders Todd Woods, a 10-year-old friend of Will's. He doesn't like creepy crawly things, especially when they're moving up his arm.
Yet Mitchell stresses the positive. "They are one of the most beneficial insects," he says. "They like to eat on soft-bodied insects."
"As long as there's's a food source, they'll stay."
Adelgids can be controlled with the application of insecticides, such as horticulture or dormant oils that smother the pests. But they don't come cheap. Fugate got a quote of $825 to treat her big trees from crown to ground.
She asked around at Pulaski County High School, where she teaches. Colleagues who teach agriculture recommended ladybugs.
Ladybug beetles, despite their benign reputations, are predators. "Some are purported to be particularly good in their feeding activity against adelgids," explained David Gray. He is a research scientist in Virginia Tech's entomology department. He studies adelgid population dynamics, that is, what causes the pests' numbers to rise and fall. He isn't aware of any direct research on ladybird beetles and adelgids, though he says there's a professor in Connecticut who is looking into the adelgid family's natural enemies in Japan.
"I can't imagine there would be any negative effects," Gray says. "Sounds sensible, sounds good."
Now it's Monday. Fugate looks around her yard. She spots about 10 live ladybugs. She looks up and hopes the bulk of Friday's release didn't fly away home.
"My hope is they're up in the trees and I can't see the other 71,990."
by CNB