Hawthorn - quite a pretty large butterfly, is a dangerous pest of many fruit crops. The hawthorn colonies damage the buds, buds and leaves of plants. Caterpillars are most often seen on rosaceous: apple , pear, cherry, cherry, cherry plum, mountain ash, as well as walnut and grapes. Hawthorn is widespread throughout Russia, found in Western Europe, East and South-East Asia. The peak of insect reproduction occurs in June - July - the period of warm weather and stable precipitation.
Harmfulness of hawthorn
Butterfly-hawthorn herself does not damage plants, since she eats nectar, but her caterpillars are real pests of garden crops. The adult caterpillar has a hairy body with black and brown-orange stripes 5 cm long. In the spring, during the appearance of the kidneys, the caterpillars are selected from the shelter, where they spent the winter, and start eating swollen buds, and in the future - buds and leaves. Caterpillars obblladyvayut leaf plate almost completely, leaving behind only the veins of the leaf.
In 1 - 2 weeks after the end of flowering, the hawthorn caterpillars creep along the tree or the structures adjoining the fruit trees, attach themselves to the cobwebs and degenerate into pupae. After 2 weeks, a butterfly forms from the pupa, leaving a reddish liquid similar to a speck of blood on the spot of attachment. Each butterfly-hawthorn lays about 500 eggs per season, from which in 15 days the caterpillars, which destroy the foliage, again appear massively. Winter caterpillars hawthorn in nests, crocheted from leaves and fastened with cobwebs.
Control measures against hawthorn
The problem of how to deal with the hawthorn is significant for large business owners and owners of private garden plots. After all, according to statistics, an average of 15% of leaves per year are lost due to damage caused by these insects. Especially pests are active in the years when a lot of precipitation falls. Methods of combating butterfly-hawthorn are diverse, in many respects they are determined by the way of life of an insect.
Mechanical method
This method of combating hawthorn caterpillars is based on the collection and destruction in winter and early spring of the nest of an insect with the hands or with the help of a pruner. In the summer, manual harvesting of hawthorn butterflies early in the morning or at sunset from plants when they are sluggish is used. It is also possible to shake caterpillars from trees onto a spread film.
Biological method
Attracting insectivorous birds in the gardens, gardeners contribute to the destruction of insects. So in the snow-less and cold winter winters large tits eliminate from 75 to 100% caterpillar hawthorn. The natural enemies of caterpillars are individual types of riders who parasitize on them. One of the components of the pest control is the fight against weeds , since the butterfly-moths feed on their nectar, when the weeds grow in bloom.
Chemical method
In the fight against the hawthorn, the same measures are effective as in the destruction
Important: after two or three seasons of activity, the butterfly-hawthorn population is reduced in a natural way.