Box elder bugs in garden

[dcross]

by the THOUSANDS! They're normally just hanging around on the wood chips, but are on some plants. Then I found a cabbage plant wilted to near death, and a potato with one wilted branch(otherwise healthy and both are surrounded by healthy plants).

Is it the box elder bugs? Or should I look elsewhere?

[suburbanite]

I know nothing about them. Fortunately, Google does:

http://www.ivyhall.district96.k12.il.../boxelder.html

[dcross]

http://s193.photobucket.com/albums/z...0elder%20bugs/

Pics of the two plants.

[suburbanite]

Dcross, maybe it is some other kind of true bug than a box elder bug.

[Paquebot]

There is no reference to those insects doing damage in gardens. Since we use wood chips for our garden aisles, I'm frequently asked to identify the young ones right now. They seem to be everywhere but in no large concentrations and are not considered a danger to anything.

As a theory about how they could damage a tomato plant, find the reason why no birds will eat them. Whatever they have in their system may also be in their excrement and be mildly toxic to plants when present in large concentrations.

Martin

[Rocky Fields]

Hey.

As Martin says, I haven't seen them damage garden plants. Logically, if they did the damage to the cabbage and potato, then thousands of them would have destroyed all the plants.

RF

[dcross]

I wasn't really convinced they were the culprits either, but what do the nymphs live on? They can't be walking to the fenceline trees and back out to the mulch...

Also, any thoughts on what DID do that? It's all first year garden, no other bugs to really speak of, just had the first adult Colorado PB a few days ago.

[Paquebot]

Supposedly they only live on pollen and sap from the box alder trees. There must have been a lot of box alder in the October city brush collection since we ended up with several big piles of chips which sat undisturbed all winter. As soon as warm weather came, there were some gobs of perhaps thousands of young. Piles have now been spread in the aisles throughout the complex and those little nymphs are quickly becoming larger bugs! If I wanted, I could probably arrange to step on at least one every 10 feet or so. But, all but a very few would be on the chips. The one thing that I did note was that their numbers are dwindling during the past hot and dry weather.

(Three CPBs yesterday, one today. All males so far. Running about 10 days later than last year for some reason.)

Martin