Insect Update 6-26-26: Billbugs in Rice, Plant Bugs in Cotton, Bollworms and Stink Bugs in Soybean

Extension entomologists Nick Bateman and Ben Thrash discuss billbugs in rice, how to look for rice delphacid, when and how to treat for spider mites in cotton, and multiple pests in soybeans. 

Transcript

[00:01] Intro/Outro 

Arkansas Row Crops Radio, providing up to date information and timely recommendations on row crop production in Arkansas. 

[00:12] Ben Thrash 

Hey everybody! Today is June 26th and bugs are starting to pick up in a lot of a lot of areas. So, Nick, what's happening in rice? 

[00:23] Nick Bateman 

It's kind of, kind of some downtime a little bit in that, you know, over the next week or two we'll have some rice starting ahead. And I've already had questions what we think stink bugs are going to be. And it seems like every year we can find them loaded up in the ditch banks. And it's not necessarily it doesn't necessarily correlate to what we're going to see in the crop, but seeing a lot of them out there, I don't know if that means we're going to deal with high stink bugs or not. 

The other thing some folks are catching are billbugs in sweep nets out there looking for delphacid, and we're going to hit on delphacid in just a second and want to know if there's something they can do. And a lot of this is in flooded rice. And I mean, honestly, no, we just don't see a lot of damage in flooded rice. 

And a lot of times the damage you're seeing or the larvae that are in the stems, there's nothing foliar that’s going to get to them there. I do feel like we're seeing just more billbugs on the landscape. It's not uncommon for us to see some in some of our weevill counts, and we've seen a lot more of them this year than we're used to, seeing adults down there in the, the root mass. 

From a delphacid standpoint, you know, it's it's kind of a trickle effect. And at Texas right now sort of they're, they're finding them more and more. They're starting to spray a little bit. It's not the big huge blowout populations that that they were dealing with around this time last year. Really it was more like first second week of July. 

So I mean, right now things are kind of on the same track they were last year. But honestly it's going to be one of them. Time will tell. We've been doing some surveys. We've yet to find any in the state. If you do have rice that's that's booting up. Good. It probably wouldn't hurt to to look just to make sure. 

And I'd go to the thickest stand that you have in that field if you got double planted ends or where the fertilizer got doubled up, those sort of things that that tends to be where they're going to congregate. So but right now things are a little bit quiet there. 

[02:33] Ben Thrash 

Yeah. And I guess in cotton plant bugs really seem to start have started to make a move into into some of these fields. And we've got cotton ranging everywhere from seems like about pin head square all the way up to guys having some blooms, starting to bloom this week, but I've heard from quite a few people that they're starting to pick up plant bugs. 

And a lot of this corn is, you know, kind of turning brown silks now. And so we're starting to get a lot of those plant bugs, move out of corn, and move off into our cotton fields. You know, on top of that, I've also heard quite a bit about mites. I mean, we even got mites over at the a little bit of mites over at the station at Marianna. 

But even with all this rain guys have had in some areas, I mean, they're still picking up quite a few spider mites. I mean, that doesn't always knock them in the head. It might delay them a little bit, but I think we with this dry spring, we had a lot of those spider mites probably got a head start. 

And so we had some pretty good populations. Then everybody goes through and, you know, starts burning, burning down ditches, burning down weeds that they weren't able to get sprayed earlier this year because, you know, of all these, all these rainfall events and some of those spider knots, just move over onto your cotton. The other thing, it seems like everybody's got aphids in their fields this year. 

I've, I've seen them in every field that I've gone to. It seems like I've seen aphids at some, at some level. So you know what? What should I do about all that? I think, you know, most guys right now on this pre blooming cotton, they're running their imidacloprid shots and you know it does okay. On your on your aphids. 

It doesn't it's not just going to completely take them out in general but it does all right on your aphids. Doesn't do anything for spider mites. But it does okay for your for your plant bugs for this time of year. But, you know, getting up there, closer to closer to bloom. I might want to move over to, like, transform or something like that, because I know a lot of guys are going to go out with Vertento as soon as it hits bloom. 

And like I said on the on our previous podcast is, I'd kind of like to make sure we got our aphids kind of in check before we go out with the Vertento application, just because I don't want to see a bunch of aphids blow up behind, blow up behind a Vertento application. And it's not necessarily because I'm scared of aphids. 

Aphids, really. It takes a whole whole lot of aphids to really cause any yield loss. But I just don't want guys to have to come back and spray for them again later and just add more money into this crop. And of course, that Vertento will do really good on, on your spider mites as well. So that will hopefully keep them in check. 

Its looked as good as anything that we've, we've tested as far as activity on spider mites goes. But anyways, that's kind of what's going on in cotton that I'm hearing about. Nick how about in beans? I know both me and you have got some calls about, like, bollworms and stink bugs. 

[06:04] Nick Bateman 

Yeah. I mean, and what's interesting about it's been a handful of bollworm calls. All of them seem to be north of 40. And running right at threshold, you know, up here around 8 or 9 in a few fields. But it's really light. Talk to some folks down in southeast Arkansas. And the question is, where are the bollworms? 

And they're not even kicking up moths and some of them bean fields. And I mean, I would assume this corn's probably sucking up most of them. Yeah. 

[06:33] Ben Thrash 

And that's what we kind of talked about was I, you know, driving around, there's areas that seem to have that really early planted corn where they got their silks had already brown, and then you still got a lot of, a lot of silking corn that's pollinating. And so, you know, bollworms are going to be going to that. 

But I'm wondering if there's big swaths of, you know, brown silking corn that bollworms might just pass up and go straight into some beans and some areas, you know, just a just a thought. 

[07:07] Nick Bateman 

And the stink bugs are still out there. And it just really depends on the calls I got this week wasn't as much of that, like R2, R3 type. First little initial push. This was a lot of early R-5 beans that were running some pretty high numbers of mainly greens. A few red bandeds starting to pop up on a regular basis down in the southeast Arkansas, but not necessarily at treatment level. 

Some of them fields were at threshold when you combined everything together. 

[07:38] Ben Thrash 

Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what I'm hearing too, this guys is picking up red bandeds here andthere. It's not like populations of red bandeds by themselves triggering threshold. But yeah, kind of when you combine it with greens and browns there, they seem to be there. I guess. And then in corn, you know, it's kind of that time of year. 

We mentioned it the other day, but, you know, be paying attention for southwestern corn bores, you know, do your best if if you're in one of these areas where you've had them in the past, this is that time of year when those southwestern corn borers are flying. And it's kind of time to make your application. And, you know, I'd recommend Besiege or Vantacor or, you know, even intrepid does a good job. 

The residual is not quite as long. But, you know, one of the diamides you're going to get several weeks of control with that. So if you're a little early, you know, you're you're protected for pretty good while. Anyway. 

[08:47] Nick Bateman 

Seeing a few random army worms right now in some signal grass kind of all throughout the state, I have no idea what that's going to mean crop wise. And the populations are real low, but starting to see a few of them out there. 

[09:05] Ben Thrash 

Yeah, I got a few pictures of them, but I hadn't seen a whole lot of numbers anyways and places I've gone. But yeah, I don't know. Is that about how about cover everything? 

[09:19] Nick Bateman 

 I think so. 

[09:20] Ben Thrash 

All right. Well, if you need us, call us. My number is (501) 517-3853. 

[09:26] Nick Bateman 

Mine is 870-456-8486. 

[09:31] Ben Thrash 

All right. Thank you very much. 

[09:34] Intro/Outro 

Arkansas Row Crops Radio is a production of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. For more information, please contact your local county extension agent or visit uaex.uada.edu.