Kleinhev, First a warm welcome to the farmers forum, and thankyou for your reply, I did wonder how the bugs got from one plant to another, wether it was windborn or carried, A post by Ozzy did sugest it was ants, and because every infected plant has red fire ants it also made me think this is the problem,

Just to go a bit further with this, we have 60 tamarind trees, they are crawling with red ants and have nests in a lot of them, also Kanoon,Mango,bamboo,lamyai.lychee, Mrs says these are harmless to the trees, but i think they have got to be there for a reason, do they also feed on sweet fruits? Personally i have given up picking the fruits because of the fire ants dropping down the back of my neck and bitting!!

Will be in Udon Thursday and will go to Big C to look for these ant thingies, it might be a bit exspensive to cover the whole farm but will try,

The trees i washed 4 days ago have now been re-infected by the bug, because of the time factor ect did not have time to spray on the white oil mix, and now it rains everyday, so perhaps that will be washed off?

I have an idea how to stop the ants, and i need everybodys thoughts on this please,

How about painting a 2inch wide band of General Purpose Grease around the base of the trees, then spraying insecticide on this, Do you think it would stem the spread of the mealy bug?

Thanks Lickey..

I have an idea how to stop the ants, and i need everybodys thoughts on this please,

How about painting a 2inch wide band of General Purpose Grease around the base of the trees, then spraying insecticide on this, Do you think it would stem the spread of the mealy bug?

Thanks Lickey..

I would not put grease around my plants.

At our farm, we spread diazinon granules in a lawn fertilizer spreader. It keeps them at bay for a while but they soon return. There are products, one called Amdro, that acts like food, when carried to the queen, it dies, killing the mound. Very expensive, but works. Use this product close to the original mound.