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Aphid Moving Day - Wasp, Midge + Lacewing Kit
For aphids that have moved onto several plants: lacewings work through the colonies, midges clear the dense ones, and wasps hunt down the stragglers.
$127.00
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Goes well with
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Aphidius ervi
Big aphids.
from $55
-
Stratiolaelaps scimitus
The roots.
from $50
-
Aphidius colemani
Afterwards.
from $54
-
Root Network
For the roots: mycorrhizae and microbes that help roots take up water and nutrients. Use at repotting, then a monthly drench.
from $15
How much, and how often
Two questions — how bad it is, and how many plants. You get a size and the dates to put it out.
How bad is it?
Pick the one that sounds like your room. If you are between two, take the higher.
How many plants are in the space?
Six-inch pots. Count a large specimen with a dense canopy as three or four.
Your size and schedule
More about this dose
The three things people ask once they have their size. Open any of them.
Am I light, moderate or heavy?
Light
- Clusters on one or two plants
- A little honeydew on the leaves below
- New growth still mostly clean
Moderate
- Colonies on several plants
- Sticky honeydew and curled new growth
- Clusters on stems as well as leaf undersides
- A few winged aphids turning up
Heavy
- Stems crowded end to end on plant after plant
- Sooty mold on the honeydew
- Winged aphids on the windows and cards
- Ants running the stems
If you are between two levels, take the higher one. This kit is for colonies that have already spread, and a spreading colony is a moving target: it is bigger by the time the box arrives than when you looked.
Spreading aphids are easy to underestimate:
- The plant you checked is not the only one. Winged aphids have usually reached the plants around it before you see them there.
- Most of them are underneath. Leaf undersides and stems carry more than the tips you can see from above.
- They don't wait. Live birth without mating means the colony grows every day between ordering and release.
Why more than one round?
Putting it out
- Keep the ants off first. A ring of sticky tape or a line of diatomaceous earth around each stem base.
- Take yellow sticky cards down for a few days. They catch the wasps and the midges.
- Wasps in the morning. Open the Aphidius colemani tube in the canopy near the colonies, in daylight.
- Lacewing eggs at dusk. Sprinkle the eggs and their carrier across the leaves near the aphids, spread over every plant with colonies. Don't dump them in one spot.
- Midges at dusk too. Set the open Aphidoletes bottle low, on damp, shaded growing medium near the worst plants.
- Leave the mummies on the leaves. Every tan husk is the next wasp.
Everything else is optional. Get these four and the release has done what it can.
A cleaner way
On a display plant, tip small piles into bio-boxes or paper cups hung in the branches instead of dusting the foliage. Same dose, nothing visible on the leaf.
The failure is forgetting. Very few programs fail because the mite underperformed. They fail in week five, when the plants look fine, the reorder does not happen, and the population holding the line ages out with nothing behind it.
A schedule is the same decision, made once. A kit when it looks bad, then another when it looks bad again, is already a rhythm — just one you have to remember at the exact moment the plants look fine.
Change the size or the frequency, skip a box, pause or cancel from your account at any time.
Is this the right kit for your problem?
What you have, whether this answers it, what each part does, and whether it will work in your room.
Is this your pest?
Moving Day is for aphids that are no longer one colony on one plant. They have spread, and the answer has to cover more ground at once.
Aphids cluster on stems, buds and the undersides of new leaves, soft and pear-shaped, in greens, pinks, yellows and blacks, with two tiny tubes at the back end. When they spread you see honeydew and curled growth on plant after plant, and winged aphids turning up on windows and sticky cards.
This kit brings three agents: green lacewing eggs that hatch into larvae that eat every aphid species, Aphidoletes aphidimyza midges whose larvae clear the crowded stems, and Aphidius colemani wasps that hunt the stragglers and leave mummies that hatch more wasps.
Then: is Moving Day the right answer to it?
Choose this if
Colonies are spreading across several plants, the clusters are dense, or you have more than one kind of aphid. The lacewings and midges work through what is there now; the wasps find what they missed and keep multiplying after them. Nothing to mix, nothing to spray, no residue and nothing to keep children or pets away from.
Choose something else if
It is still one or two early colonies: the Eviction Notice does that with two agents instead of three. If you are new to beneficials and want one visible colony gone, the Gateway Bug is the gentler start. And root aphids live below where any of these forage.
What it treats, and what it won't
Tan, papery aphids glued to the leaves are mummies, each with a wasp developing inside. Leave them where they are: they are the part of this kit that keeps working after the rest.
How it works
What each part does, and what that leaves you looking at.
Eggs that hatch into hunters
The eggs hatch within a day or two, depending on temperature. The larvae can't fly, so they stay on the plant and work leaf by leaf through the colonies for two to three weeks, eating every aphid species they find.
Clearers that work at night
Adult Aphidoletes fly after dark, find colonies by scent and lay their eggs in among them. Their orange larvae work through the most crowded stems.
Searchers that multiply
Colemani finds the scattered aphids on plants you haven't checked. Each parasitized aphid becomes a mummy, and each mummy hatches another wasp, so this part keeps going after the others have done theirs.
Ants first. Ants farm aphids for their honeydew and drive predators away. A sticky band or a line of diatomaceous earth around each stem base before you release decides whether this works.
Will it work in your room?
Two checks. Deal with any ants first. And take yellow sticky cards down for a few days around the release, because they catch wasps and midges as efficiently as pests.
About the Moving Day kit
Three products in one box: Aphidius colemani mummies, Aphidoletes pupae, and green lacewing eggs.
New to beneficials?
Four things that catch almost everyone the first time.
After you release it
What changes, in what order, and the one thing not to tidy up.
How you'll know it's working
The biggest colonies shrink first, where the lacewings and midges are working. Then mummies start appearing among what is left.
After that, fresh honeydew stops appearing on the leaves below and new growth comes in clean. How long that takes depends on how far the aphids had spread when you started.
Leave the mummies alone. Each one is an unhatched wasp, and they are what carries the cleanup on after the first round.
Getting it to you
What is in the box, how it travels, and what happens if it arrives wrong.
What arrives
Three tubes: Aphidius colemani mummies, Aphidoletes pupae in a ventilated bottle, and green lacewing eggs in a carrier.
The lacewing eggs may already be starting to hatch, which is why they go out the day they arrive. The wasps and midges emerge over the following days.
Same day, two moments. Wasps in the morning. Lacewing eggs across the leaves and the midge bottle low on damp soil at dusk.
When it ships, and when it lands
Shipping
We ship when they're ready to travel. Live orders go out Monday to Thursday. If a colony needs a beat to peak, or we're propagating a fresh batch, yours might hold up to a week. All mites and insects ship 2-day or Overnight depending on what's best for them.
When it lands
Open it the day it lands. Take yellow sticky cards down first. Put the wasps out that morning. At dusk, sprinkle the lacewing eggs and carrier across the leaves of every plant with colonies, and set the midge bottle on damp, shaded soil near the worst plants.
Why we pack extra
Two days in a van is a long trip for something this small, so we send more than you paid for.
A mummy is the size of a pinhead, a midge pupa is smaller than a grain of rice, and a lacewing egg is smaller still.
A trip like that is hard on anything this small, so we price it in: the number on the label gets counted out, and then roughly 15% more goes in on top as a cushion.
The ones that don't make it are already paid for.
If you can see them
Ladybugs, lacewing larvae, Orius — the minute pirate bug — and the beetles. These are the ones big enough to photograph, and a picture tells us a lot.
Something look wrong? Photograph them in the container and email the photo to info@fgmnnursery.com.
If you can't see them
Mummies, pupae and eggs, which is what this kit ships as. They look the same whether they're viable or not, and no photograph settles that. So we don't ask you to take one.
Email info@fgmnnursery.com and our entomologist takes you through the diagnostic instead — where the box sat, what your room was doing, and then what the aphids are doing about ten days later.
Seventy-two hours from delivery, either way, with your order number. Replacement or store credit, your pick.
What it does not reach
Three gaps this page has already named, and the beneficial that closes each one.
Potato and foxglove aphid need the larger wasp
The lacewings and midges in this kit take big aphids too, but the colemani wasps can't develop inside them. If most of what you have is large and long-legged, Aphidius ervi is the wasp built for them.
Root aphids are below where these three forage
White, waxy aphids on the roots are out of reach of anything that hunts on leaves. Stratiolaelaps scimitus lives in the top of the mix and is the one agent with a published field trial against a root aphid. Worth trying, not a cure. Isolating new plants is the best-supported thing you can do.
Keep a few wasps going once it's clean
Once new growth has stayed clean for a couple of weeks, a small release of Aphidius colemani while the next colonies are still small and scattered is the most economical moment to stay ahead. The wasps are at their best finding the first few aphids, before you have noticed them.
Two small add-ons that make the rest work harder. Blue cards give you the dated count this page keeps asking you to read. Breeder's Blend is pollen and Artemia; it keeps the population fed through the lull when prey gets scarce.
Keep reading
Written by the people who raise and ship them.
- Four Ways to Ruin an Aphid's DayLadybugs, lacewing larvae, Aphidius wasps and Aphidoletes midges are not four strengths of the same thing. Three of them arrive, work and are finished.…Read it
- The Ants Are Not Passing Through.If there are ants going up and down the stem of a plant with aphids on it, they are not there by coincidence and…Read it
- Eggs Cost Less. Larvae Are the Ones That Arrive.The same insect is sold at two life stages for two very different prices, and the reason is not packaging. Most of the gap…Read it
Questions
Why three different beneficials?
Each one handles a different part of a spreading problem. Lacewing larvae work leaf by leaf through the colonies. Aphidoletes larvae clear the most crowded stems. Aphidius colemani wasps find the scattered aphids on plants you haven't checked and keep multiplying after the others have done their part.
Why lacewing eggs rather than larvae?
Eggs let us put far more lacewings into the kit for the price. They hatch within a day or two, depending on temperature, and the larvae that come out hunt for two to three weeks. A warm room speeds the hatch up.
Are these safe around pets and people?
Yes. The wasps can't sting people or pets, the adult midges feed only on nectar and honeydew, and lacewing larvae feed on aphids and other small insects. Safe around people, pets, plants and food crops.
Why release them at different times of day?
The wasps search by daylight, so they go out in the morning. The lacewing eggs and the midge bottle go out at dusk. Same day, two moments.
How often should I repeat it?
Every 2 to 4 weeks while aphids are active, until new growth stays clean two weeks in a row. Once it's clean, a small colemani release now and then keeps new colonies from taking hold.
What if I can't release it the day it arrives?
Release it as soon as you can. The lacewing eggs keep hatching in the container, so they need to go out promptly. If the wasps and midges truly have to wait, keep them somewhere cool and dark, around 45 to 55°F, for no more than 48 hours.