Cl4-Lancatt«r Farming, Saturday, November 29, II
Stingless Wasps: Good Pest Busters For Poultry Farmers
BY MARTHA SHELDON
New York Correspondent
VENICE CENTER, N.Y. -
Baits, sprays, and traps aren’t the
only way to rid a bam of flies. In
their seemingly endless war
against these bothersome and
disease-carrying insects, egg
producers are now finding a
staunch ally in a tiny stingless
wasp called the Nasonia
vitripennis.
Once a week during fly season,
i gg producer Jeff Edwards of the
Central New York farming
community of Venice Center
receives a sandwich-sized white
bag of 10,000 fly eggs, parasited by
tiny wasp pupae and mixed with
wood chips. As soon as Edwards
notices minute black specks
crawling around on the inside of
the bag, he knows the Nasonia are
hatching, and he can put his wasps
to work.
It takes about five minutes to
walk through his three bams,
reaching into the bag, pulling out
handfulls of wasps and sawdust,
and sprinkling them onto the
manure in the pits below the hens’
cages.
Del extension seeks
Master Gardener
NEWARK, Del. - Delaware
Cooperative Extension is planning
a new master gardener training
class for New Castle County to
begin in early February 1987.
Applications are now being ac
cepted from interested individuals.
The state’s first group of master
gardeners graduated last spring
and has since been actively
engaged in various horticultural
activities in the county. A second
class is about to graduate in Kent
and Sussex counties.
“This new volunteer program
has been well received by the
public and is making an important
contribution to Extension’s
educational effort,” says Dave
Tatnall, University of Delaware
extension horticultural agent.
Participants need not be county
residents, but they must be able to
work in New Castle County after
they have been certified. They will
receive 45 hours of intensive
horticultural training in return for
ii
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Unlike many chemical means of
fly control, Nasonia wasps do not
kill adult flies. Instead, these tiny
fruit-fly sized insects seek out fly
pupae and lay their eggs in them.
When the Nasonia mature to the
larva stage, they feed on the fly
pupae, killing off future
generations of house flies, stable
flies, blowflies and the many other
species of flies which are becoming
a year-round problem for poultry
growers, thanks to the advent of
climate control in the layer houses.
Although Edwards obtains his
Nasonia wasps from IPM
Laboratories, Inc., just a few miles
down the road in Locke, New York,
he first heard about the insects
from Scott Kreher of Kreher
Poultry Farms, a large egg
producing facility halfway across
the state in the affluent Buffalo
suburb of Clarence.
Several years ago Kurt Kreher
attended a trade show in Atlanta
where he learned about using
natural predators to control fly
problems. Before the next fly
season began, Kreher contracted
with Beneficial Insectory of
an equal number of hours of
volunteer service to be spent
helping extension professionals
increase gardening awareness,
solve gardening problems and
serve the gardening public.
“If you enjoy gardening as a
hobby, would like to help other
gardeners or your community,
want to learn more about gar
dening and have a desire to help
Extension develop effective new
programs, then master gardening
may be for you,” says Tatnall.
Training will start Feb. 3, 1987,
in Townsend Hall on the University
of Delaware campus in Newark.
Sessions will be held on Tuesdays
and Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 12:15
p.m.
Deadline for applications is
Wednesday, Jan. 7. For more
information write the New Castle
County Extension Office, Town
send Hall, University of Delaware,
Newark, DE19717-1303. Or call 451-
2506.
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Jeff Edwards controls flies in his poultry house witl
California, to keep him supplied
with three varieties of insects.
The Nasonia wasp was just one
of three predators the firm began
shipping him on a regular basis.
And although Kreher felt the
predators were helping whittle
down his fly population, Cornell
University professor Dr. Donald
Rutz questioned the ability of the
California wasp to reproduce in the
cool northeast.
A Cornell graduate student’s
research study to determine if the
wasps could reproduce, proved
inconclusive.
Still concerned about the
California Nasonia’s reproductive
viability in cool climates, Rutz put
Kreher in touch with entomologist
Carol Glenister, of IPM Labs, who
was already doing work in the field
of integrated pest management.
Glenister agreed to begin raising
Nasonias for Kreher and others in
the region.
Kreher now receives about
100,000 wasps a week from
Glenister and is pleased with the
job they are doing. Their ad
vantages, says Kreher, are that
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they are easier to apply than
chemicals and require no license to
use. They also eliminate the hassle
of having to suit up in order to
apply them.
Costing no more to use than
sprays, predators reduce the need
for dangerous chemicals and
prevent the buildup of a chemical
resistant fly population.
But both Kreher and Glenister
advocate using more than just the
Nasonia wasps for controlling
flies. Kreher is also using a tiny
mite and a beetle, both of which
crawl on the surface of the
manure, searching for fly eggs to
consume.
“What I have found,” said
Kreher, “is that in my three high
rises, by using careful cleanout
methods and keeping the manure
dry, I can keep the natural
predators alive and in the building,
and can control my fly population
without chemicals.”
In fact, Kreher finds that in one
of his buddings the predators have
become self-sustaining - they are
reproducing well enough and often
enough that he no longer needs to
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release Nasonia wasps or any
other predators in order to keep
the flies under control.
A walk through Edwards’ layer
houses during fly seasons, is proof
positive the wasps are doing their
job. While Edwards describes pest
scenes of flies clinging to the
ceiling in one large black mass
along the water pipes and elec
trical lines, only a fly or two is
presently in sight.
And in the egg house, where fly
specks used to cause extra work in
the washing process, not a single
fly can now be seen or heard.
Kreher said using predators foe
pest control is a relatively new and
“a little bit different idea. But,” he
says, ‘‘we’re so excited about it
ourselves, that when Carol
(Glenister) indicated she was not
sure there was enough volume to
keep going, I sent out letters to
other producers to let them know
about the wasps.”
Kreher now knows at least four
other large producers who are
using Nasonia wasps and in
tegrated pest management to keep
a fid on their fly problem.
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