Getting rid on mealy bugs on cactus and succulent plants can be very challenging. They can hide on the plants for months or as long as a year before they show themselves. Plants may suddenly rot, and then uprooting the plant can reveal a colony of mealy bugs that had gone unnoticed on the underside of the stem. We can destroy them on one plant and then not realize that they have infested another plant near by until they suddenly seem to show up everywhere at once.

The thing to understand about these insects that most people may not realize is that getting rid of the fuzzy spots is not enough to cure the problem. If we simply stay on the job of removing the pinkish white patches every time they occur with rubbing alcohol and cotton it will never be enough to kill them off. If a plant has the patches of fuzz we associate with mealy bugs it is important to understand that the insects are probably all over the plant - not just in the fuzzy spots. The most important thing to understand about getting rid of these insects is that the entire plant has to be treated including the roots.

A few years ago I was able to rid a few of my Hoya plants of mealy bugs using an insecticide called Eight. I've heard that there are other commercial insecticides which are more effective and that it is very important to use a 'systemic' kind of product so the whole plant will become toxic to the insects. Anyway, when I treated the Hoyas with insecticide the first few times the insects came back in a few months. Then I tried a different treatment strategy which ended up curing the plants. I sprayed the Hoyas once a week for 4 weeks instead of only spraying them once and thinking the job was done. The repeated treatments worked I guess because there might have been new batches of insects hatching out and they would have been killed as the plants were sprayed week after week.

Now I'm experimenting with natural ingredient and organic methods, but I'm still using the same practice of treating any plants that have mealy bugs at least four times over a months time. I have a lot fewer problems with these insects than I use to but every now and then I will expect to find a plant that will have been hiding the little critters for who knows how long.

This winter I'm attempting to make my own tobacco based insecticide, and hope to kill off some mealy bugs. I soaked a few packs of - all natural ingredient - cigarets in some natural ingredient fluids. The solvents are witch hazel and a garlic oil product made for repelling insects. I soaked the cigarettes for about a month and the fluids turned a very dark brown color, which is good. Then I added these tobacco tea fluids to about 5 gallons of water, and strangely the tobacco, witch hazel and garlic all smell very nice together.

I have a few hundred Aloe, Gasteria and Haworthia in pots where a few of them turn up with mealy bugs every year. This last week I noticed 2 plants with little mealy bug colonies on them and so these plant were chosen for the test plants. I sprayed them with the new solution and used enough on each plant to wet the roots too. All of these plants look very well and remaining free of any damage that could have been caused by the spray. I plan to spray these plants every week for the month of November.

There is a fuzzy patch of mealy on one of the plants I'll leave for the month to watch, but it will be several months to a year before knowing for sure if this works. Mealy bugs can live on roots of plants and it may take a long time before they become visible again - unless they don't survive.

If they do survive I'll have to try a stronger concentration, but these bugs will have to be killed off sooner or later.

This Parodia leninghausii is one we found in a Wisconsin greenhouse, and it was apparently growing there for may years before we found it. It was a very old plant and was only priced at about 10 dollars. This was several years ago and large plants like this one would cost more now, but we were thrilled with the find.

In the winter of 05 - 06 the process of searching for mealy bugs involved examining the roots of nearly all of our cacti. They were taken out of their soil and repotted, and most of them didn't show any signs of suffering from the procedure.

This Parodia l. began to shrink after it was repotted and it kept shrinking even though it was given water every month. The whole stem began to fold over and it looked like we were going to lose our beautiful old plant. I thought about cutting it off to let the pups at the base take over, but there were no signs of rot to justify this kind of procedure.

I felt so bad for the plant, and I couldn't bring myself to take a picture of it in it's collapsed form. The photo here is one Ann modified to recreate how the stem of the plant had shrunk and folded over on its side.

Anyway, I thought it was going to die, but in case any part of it might survive we put it outside in the spring. There is plenty of rain here in Wisconsin and after about 3 storms the stem began to straighten up again. A few more rain storms and it made a full recovery, and now is full and beautiful again.

Clearly the plant was suffering from severe dehydration and is now recovered again. Even though it was given water in the winter after it was transplanted it refused to take up more water until the following spring. The winter transplant was too hard on the plant and caused it to lose its stored water supply. It was a mistake on my part to transplant it in the winter, and I wouldn't have done this if I hadn't been searching for mealy bug colonies.

This does show an interesting growth habit of many cactus plants. I would expect a generic like Echinocereus to ignore water in the winter, and was surprised to see that a Parodia would do the same kind of thing. Many Echinocereus and Opuntia varieties will shrink significantly for their winter rest, but I would expect a Parodia like this one to take up water through every season. The reason the plant shrank so much must have been because the roots were damaged in the transplanting process. Strangely the plant wouldn't recover from this dehydrated state until 3 months later, when it was time for it's spring growth cycle.

Apparently even this Parodia might be ignoring water in it's winter rest cycle the way Opuntia plants do.

We are thrilled to have our plant survive when we thought it was dying, and I've learned a few things too. Avoid transplanting cacti in the winter, because if the roots are damaged they may fail to recover - at least until the plant is ready to grow again. Next time I'm looking for mealy bugs on roots I'll quarantine suspicious plants until spring and disturb their roots at a time when they are ready for growth.

Thank you for the photo work Ann.

These photos were sent to me from a customer who had Bible school children pot cactus plants as part of the course. I really enjoy the way the pots were decorated and wanted to share them.