Mealybugs

Question 1: Well I recently bought soil that was infected with mealy bugs, needless to say I disposed of the rest of the soil. The garden centre where I bought the soil from gave me a mealybug killer….just to be on the safe side I re-potted ALL if the plants that I had just re-potted and two plants still appear to have mealybugs. I have used the mealybug killer (ok I only used it last week) but they still have one or two bugs walking around, and the packet says I can only use it once every 4 months. Before I got the killer I tried flooding out the soil as recommended on some internet sites, then I re-potted them all and washed all the roots clean of soil, washed the pots etc. Does anyone have any other ideas on how to get rid of these bugs?

Question 2: Also I don’t know if this is significant or not BUT one of the infected plants always seems to have a layer of white mould on the top of the soil, ok it may just be me over watering it with the flooding etc, does this have any significance to the mealybugs or it is just me overwatering?

Thank you :-)

For small plants I usually take a q-tip dipped in rubbing alcohol and wipe them off with that. If your product can only be applied every 4 months I suspect it's a systemic insecticide which gets absorbed into the plant's tissues and keeps working for a number of months--if that's the case then even if there are still a couple bugs alive now, as soon as they munch on your plant it'll kill them so you may not need to worry about doing anything else.

Are you certain they are mealy bugs? You say your plants still have one or two bugs "walking" around. Mealy bugs appear as cottony blobs at the stem/leaf joints. I have never seen one walking. I'm wondering if what you have could be aphids? Those you can visibly see moving around.

For mealies I have used the same method as ecrane3 stated above, using a q-tip dipped in isopropyl alcohol. I have heard other people say they have put the alcohol in a spray bottle and sprayed the plants. I also use a product called Garden Safe Insecticidal Soap: http://www.gardensafe.com/ProductCategories/indoorinsecticide/InsecticidalSoap/ that works very well on mealies as well as a few other "critters".

I don't know what they are exactly. Two of my spider plants that had what I suspected to be mealybugs have a layer of fluff around the base of the plant - where the plant goes into the soil.

The suspected mealybugs, I don't know what they are...I've looked and looked on the net and the closest we found was a site which showed pics of mealybugs but it doesn't look like the pictures of mealybugs I can find today. Can anyone help identify them - they are about 1-2mm in length and are white or pale browny - they walk around, they appear to have little legs, and they look like corn flies/thunder bugs (only white). They don't look like the pictures of aphids but I'm totally clueless really.

Thank you :)

The layer of fluff at the base of the plant is probably a mold or mildew of some sort, usually caused by the soil staying too wet. http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/problems/preventing-mold-in-the-soil-of-a-houseplant.htm

I don't think you have mealies but rather aphids: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=images+of+aphids+on+plants&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title
maybe the whitish color is younger ones.

Here are some images of mealy bugs (they look like white cottony blobs: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=images+of+mealy+bugs+on+plants&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title

Hi,

I have tried to find the site where it showed the bugs as mealybugs, but I can't find it. I think the killer I got was for aphids as well so fingers crossed. I had only seen a couple of them since i cleaned them all out and then I watered them with the killer and I haven't seen any more *touches wood*. Lets hope it stays that way.