Not only we, but also about a dozen pests, including the cherry slimy sawfly, claim the cherry harvest. The larvae of this insect do not damage the berries themselves; they feed exclusively on leaf tissue, but with severe infestation they noticeably weaken the plant, which affects the yield.
A “harmless” larva will leave only a skeleton of leaves after two to three weeks of increased feeding. A favorite delicacy is the leaves of stone fruits and some pomaceous crops - cherries, cherries, serviceberries, hawthorns, and can sometimes spread to rowan, quince, and cotoneaster.
It is believed that the cherry sawfly causes minor economic damage, so control with chemicals is carried out only if 25% of the leaves are affected. Massive damage to the tree is indicated by the characteristic, scorched appearance of the foliage. Accordingly, the plant becomes weaker, its immunity decreases, and productivity deteriorates.
Advice from the "Household"
You can find out whether the sawfly’s threshold of harmfulness has been reached using a simple visual inspection. It's time to sound the alarm if every fifth of the randomly selected leaves is damaged.
To protect the garden from the cherry slimy sawfly, both agrotechnical and biochemical control measures are used. With a small number of pests, you can get by with preventive and folk remedies. Let's look at the most effective ones.
Deep digging of tree trunk circles in late autumn. This agrotechnical technique allows you to destroy most of the pupae and false caterpillars that are in a state of rest (diapause). When soil layers are turned over, they will fall to the surface and will be destroyed by birds or frozen out.
Mechanical collection of larvae. The technique is used when growing small quantity low-growing varieties fruit crops so that you can inspect each tree. It is clear that this method is effective if there are single specimens of the cherry sawfly.
Chemical treatment of affected plants. Any insecticides designed to control pests of fruit crops are suitable - Confidor, Mospilan, Aktara, Inta-Vir, Calypso. It is also recommended to use pyrethroid preparations for spraying, the effect of which is similar to natural pyrethrins. For example, chamomile flowers contain them in large quantities.
The first generation of insects, which coincides with the fruiting period of cherries, can be poisoned with chamomile infusion. On a bucket hot water add 400 g of dried flowers and leave for 24 hours. The solution is filtered so that it sticks to the leaves, 30 g of dissolved tar soap is added.
Pollination wood ash. The folk method gives results with a small infection of trees. Immediately after the rain, while the leaves are wet, they are pollinated with ash. When the larva comes into contact with it, it gets burned, and its appetite “deteriorates” significantly. After repeated application, most of the pests fall off.
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Linden slimy sawfly ( Caliroa annulipes. Family Tenthredinidae- real sawflies). The name of the pest is the linden slimy sawfly, but this does not mean that it only affects linden trees. Its voracious larvae, which simultaneously resemble both slugs and leeches, gnaw through the leaf plate, leaving behind an openwork skeleton. Usually young trees suffer from this pest; it rarely attacks strong adult specimens.
Found everywhere
In Russia, the linden mucous sawfly is found everywhere. The larvae feed on oak, birch, willow, beech and blueberry, gnawing out the tissue between the veins of the leaves, skeletonizing them. This pest lives on trees in thinned out stands, on southern, well-lit slopes. Prefers leaves of the upper tier of the crown and its southern part, outer branches, well-lit separately standing trees, is not found in the center of the planting.
It causes the greatest harm in young forests, nurseries, parks, squares, shelterbelts, roadside strips and street plantings.
Older trees are rarely damaged, and predominantly individual well-lit branches are colonized.
Imago
Adult larvae do not descend along branches and trunks to the ground to cocoon, but always fall from the leaves. Imago (adult insects) fly in the first ten days of June. The male and female are small, 4 to 6 mm long, with two pairs of transparent wings. The body is black, shiny, antennae and legs are black. Females lay eggs scattered between the veins on the lower surface of the leaf blade, under the epidermis of the leaves, in cuts made with the help of the ovipositor in the parenchyma of the underside of the leaf - the so-called pockets. The masonry is clearly visible and looks like small brown swellings. Females lay 10–30 eggs on one leaf, and their fertility is 50–70 eggs.
Linden leaves damaged by slimy sawfly 
Linden slimy sawfly larvae 
The linden sawfly prefers the leaves of the upper tier of the crown
Life for the larva
Embryonic development lasts 1–2 weeks. When hatching, the larvae gnaw exit holes in the dome of the egg sac through which they pass out. One leaf blade can contain from 2 to 28 eggs, more often 9–14.
The hatched larvae are soon covered with transparent yellowish mucus. They are small at first, but can reach a length of 12 mm. The duration of the larval stage is 15–20 days. The body of the larvae is translucent, dark green, covered with translucent mucus secreted skin. The anterior part of the body is greatly expanded; the larvae look more like small leeches. Previously, entomologists called them sawfly slugs. The head of the larvae is round and light brown. There are 7 pairs of abdominal legs, the last pair of legs on the 10th segment is underdeveloped. During the development period, the larvae molt 5–6 times.
Larvae younger ages They gnaw out the pulp of the leaf from the underside between the veins in small spots, and skeletonize the older leaves entirely, leaving only the network of veins intact. The larvae are inactive and cling tightly to the leaves. Planting into the soil begins at the end of June. The larvae pupate in dense oval cocoons made of soil at a depth of 5–15 cm.
In most regions, two generations of sawfly develop over the summer. Second generation larvae can be detected until mid-September.
Large-leaved linden (Tilia platyphyllos Scop.) and l. are highly resistant to the linden sawfly. felt (T. tomentosa Moench.).
Control measures
If larvae are found on the leaves, the plants are treated with an insecticide included in the list of pesticides and agrochemicals approved for use on the territory Russian Federation this year.
Real sawflies- family of sessile bellies Hymenoptera insects from the group of sawflies, which includes about 400 genera and more than 5000 species. Many species of sawflies are pests of forests and agricultural crops. Representatives of the family are distributed throughout the world, but more of them are in countries with temperate and cold climates: for example, in Finland there are more than 700 species, and in Russia - more than 2000. And very few species live in Australia and South America.
Sawfly pest - description
The sawfly beetle, depending on the species, can be from 2 to 32 mm long. The head of sawflies is not separated from the body, like that of a wasp or a bee, for which they are called sessile bellies. Sawfly heads are large, mobile, equipped with well-developed jaws, two large eyes and three simple eyes located in front. Sawfly whiskers are bristly or thread-like, and they have two pairs of transparent, non-folding wings. The females have a sawtooth-shaped ovipositor hidden in their abdomen, with which they damage plants. In males, the place where in females there is an opening for the exit of the ovipositor is covered with a plate.
In early spring sawflies mate, after which the females lay eggs, making an incision in the tissue of one or another part of the plant for each, after which the female seals the pocket with the egg with secretions that protect both the egg and part of the plant from rotting.
The sawfly larva, as soon as it emerges from the egg, begins to eat, causing significant damage to plants. In the larval stage, sawfly insects are similar to butterfly caterpillars, however, caterpillars have no more than 5 pairs of legs and six eyes, and sawfly larvae have 6 or 8 pairs of legs and only 2 eyes, which is why beetle larvae are called pseudocaterpillars. Having eaten enough, sawfly caterpillars descend from the tree at the beginning of summer and build cocoons for pupation in the ground from their own excrement, dust and saliva. In mid-summer, the second generation of pests emerges from the cocoons, and in one season the sawfly can produce up to 4 generations, which eat foliage from spring to autumn.
All sawflies are herbivorous. Each species lives on a specific wild or cultivated plant, damaging it and feeding on its tissues.
Measures to combat sawfly
Sawfly remedies (preparations)
Used in the fight against sawfly chemicals– insecticides. The best insecticides from sawflies are:
- Karbofos is a broad-spectrum contact insecticide-acaricide, which is included in many preparations;
- Benzophosphate is an organophosphorus insecticide, an acaricide with enteric contact action;
- Metaphos is a contact insecticide with broad-spectrum acaricidal properties. The active ingredient of the drug is parathion methide;
- Chlorophos is a contact-intestinal pesticide and insecticide widely used to control plant pests;
- Phosfamide is an insecto-acaricide of contact and systemic action, non-toxic for warm-blooded animals;
- Arrivo is a broad-spectrum contact-intestinal insecticide, the active ingredient of which is cypermethrin;
- Virin-Diprion is a viral drug that destroys pests on trees and other plants;
- Aktara is an insecticide of the neonicotinoid group, effective against many pests;
- Karate is a pyrethroid insecto-acaricide of intestinal contact action, effective even with low consumption of the drug. Active ingredient: lambda-cyhalothrin;
- Confidor is a contact-intestinal insecticide with systemic action against sucking and gnawing pests, the active ingredient of which is imidacloprid;
- Mospilan is a systemic insecticide with contact-intestinal action;
- Kinmiks is a highly effective broad-spectrum pyrethroid insecticide;
- Decis is a garden insecticide of contact-intestinal action, blocking digestive system pests. Active ingredient is deltamethrin.
In addition to these drugs, others are also used to kill sawflies.
Sawfly: prevention
As a preventive measure against sawflies, it is necessary to dig up and loosen the soil in the tree trunks of trees and shrubs - this leads to the death of a significant part of the sawfly pupae and larvae. Do not leave diseased and dried out trees on the site, which pupated sawflies use for wintering. Ovaries damaged by the sawfly should be torn off and burned or buried to a depth of at least 50 cm. In early spring, hunting belts can be put on tree trunks. Pheromone traps are also effective against sawflies.
Fighting sawfly with folk remedies
For treating plants against sawflies on early stage development, you can use an infusion of 1 kg of aconite herb, collected during the flowering period, in 10 liters of water, to which 30 ml of alkali is added and kept for two days. Before using as intended, add 40-50 g to the infusion liquid soap.
Also used against sawfly larvae is an infusion of 1 kg of finely chopped chamomile flowers and leaves, collected during flowering, in 10 liters of water heated to a temperature of 60-70 ºC. Chamomile is infused for 12 hours, after which the infusion is filtered, diluted with the same amount of water and 80 g of soap are added (40 g for every 10 liters).
1200 g of dried wormwood herb is infused for three days in 10 liters of water, after which it is filtered and 50-100 g of baking soda is added to the infusion.
2 kg of pine needles are poured into a bucket of water and, stirring daily, left for a week. dark place, and then filtered. Before use, the resulting pine concentrate is diluted with water 1:3 or even 1:5.
70 g of soda ash and 20 g of liquid soap are dissolved in 10 liters of water and the plants are treated with this solution.
3 kg of sifted ash is poured into 10 liters of hot water, left for two days, filtered through gauze or a fine sieve and 40 g of liquid soap is added.
1 kg of fresh tansy is poured into 10 liters of water, boiled for 2 hours, allowed to cool, filtered and added 40 g of soap.
However, it should be noted that it was possible to cope with the sawfly using folk remedies only in cases where there were few of them. Basically, herbal decoctions and infusions are used as a prophylactic agent.
Types of sawfly
Since the species of sawflies that damage cultivated plants, a lot, we will only talk about those that are more common than others.
Sawfly on roses
- openly living on bushes and feeding on foliage, which include roseate, variable roseate, roseate mucous, common roseate, black and cherry slimy sawflies;
- living hidden and feeding on shoots from the inside: roseate ascending and roseate descending sawflies, causing great harm to roses.
If the number of sawflies is not very high, their larvae are collected by hand and destroyed. It is better to do this in the morning, when the larvae are clearly visible on the leaves. But if there are a lot of openly living sawflies, you will have to resort to insecticides: Decis, Confidor, Aktar, Fastak or Karate. Digging the soil around the bushes will help reduce the number of sawfly cocoons. Measures to combat the roseate sawfly, which lives hidden, consist in the use of systemic insecticides: Mospilan, Aktara or Enzhio, and the bushes must be treated at least 2 times with an interval of 20 days, and damaged shoots must be cut out and burned.
pine sawfly
The pine sawfly pest lives wherever coniferous trees, because it feeds on pine needles. Russia, the Caucasian and Asian countries, and Japan suffer from this type of pest; it has also been introduced to North America. It is not found only in the Arctic.
There are two species in the pine sawfly population: the common pine sawfly and the red pine sawfly, with the red pine sawfly being much less common than the common sawfly. At the beginning of spring, sawflies eat old needles, and then move on to young shoots and damage not only the needles, but also the branches. The trees most commonly affected by sawflies are Scots pine and Banks pine. Pine sawflies are especially voracious in dry, warm weather.
In addition to these pests, pine is also damaged by the weaver pine sawfly, which is common in Europe, Siberia and Kazakhstan. The star sawfly is 10 to 16 mm long, has a black head and chest covered with yellow and white streaks, and transparent wings. The olive-green larva of this species with four brown stripes, 18-26 mm long, moves with three pairs of thoracic legs and has no abdominal legs. This sawfly is called a weaver because its larvae form a hiding place in the form of a tube of cobwebs. The star sawfly feeds on young needles, and when it is massively populated, the tops of branches suffer, and sometimes entire trees die.
Pine sawflies are destroyed with glue belts and insecticides. If the pest is affected big square forest lands, then they resort to aviation services to process trees.
Spruce sawfly
Spruce needles are damaged by the spruce sawfly, eating young needles of the current year. The peak of its destructive activity occurs at the end of May and beginning of June, and outbreaks of its fertility occur after warm winter: The pest produces a huge number of caterpillars for another 5-7 years. Detecting the presence of a spruce sawfly is easy: as soon as you notice a lot of eaten or damaged needles on the spruce trees, know that this is the work of sawfly larvae.
Destroy the pest different ways: collected by hand, attracting birds, ants, rodents to the planting, installing adhesive plates on spruce trees, digging up the soil under the trees to get rid of pupae, collecting and burning fallen pine needles and treating the trees with Kinmiks or Karbofos when caterpillars appear.
Plum sawfly
Each sawfly larvae damages up to 6 fruits, and if there are a lot of pests on your plum tree, you can say goodbye to the harvest. The fight against plum sawfly begins before the plum blossoms: the tree is sprayed with Chlorophos, Rogor, Karbofos, Cyanox or Tsidial. After flowering, the treatment of the tree with insecticides is repeated.
In early spring, to repel sawflies, you can spray the plum tree before the beetles fly out of the cocoons with an infusion of wormwood or a diluted infusion of pine concentrate. Before flowering, choosing a cloudy day, adult individuals are shaken off onto the litter and then necessarily burned. Larvae overwintering in the soil are destroyed during the autumn digging of the soil in tree trunk circle tree.
Rapeseed sawfly
Cruciferous crops are damaged by the rapeseed sawfly, which is widespread in areas with temperate and cool climates. The greenish-gray larva of the rapeseed sawfly, covered with small warts and moving with the help of 11 pairs of cylindrical legs, grows to 20-25 mm, but during the process of pupation its length is reduced to 6-11 mm. The adult is only 6-8 mm in size with a black lacquered head and diamond-shaped spots on the back, colored yellow-orange.
Despite small sizes, the rapeseed sawfly has a high threshold of harmfulness: 2-3 larvae per 1 m² can cause serious damage. It is especially dangerous in the forest-steppe zones of Moldova, Ukraine and the European part of Russia. The rapeseed sawfly feeds on shoots and leaves of cabbage, radish, turnip, rapeseed, mustard, rutabaga, daikon, turnip or radish. The main diet of the pest consists of buds, leaf pulp and young pods. As a result of damage caused by the sawfly, plants do not form fruits, which is why yield losses for crops such as turnips and rapeseed can amount to 80-95%.
To combat rapeseed sawfly, when 10 percent or more of the shoots are infected, plants are treated with insecticides. As preventive measures carry out deep loosening of the soil, removal of weeds, destruction of plant residues after harvesting, compliance with crop rotation and the formation of bait crops with the subsequent destruction of pests on them.
Cherry slimy sawfly beetle Caliroa cerasi L. - a black shiny insect 4-6 mm long, with transparent wings with smoky shading in the middle part, yellowish lower legs. The larva is 9-11 mm long, greenish-yellow, covered with black mucus, the anterior edge is thickened. The mucus secreted by the larva smells like ink.
The pupa is white, in a dense cocoon. A polyphagous pest that damages pome and stone fruit crops, it is widely distributed on rowan, hawthorn, rose hip, etc. The sawfly develops in 1-2 generations. The larvae overwinter in the soil, pupate there in the spring, and adult insects emerge at the end of May - June. Females lay eggs on the underside of leaves. After 7-15 days, the larvae hatch, which are soon covered with mucus. The sawfly insects shown in the photo clearly demonstrate the expressiveness of their appearance.
The larvae skeletonize the leaves within 15-25 days. Having finished feeding, the larvae go into the soil and pupate in cocoons. Flight of the second generation of sawflies and egg laying are observed in late July - early August, and the development of larvae occurs until early October, when they go into the soil for the winter. The number of second generation larvae is always much higher, and they damage leaves on trees and shrubs more severely.
See what the sawfly beetle looks like in the photo, which illustrates its distinctive features:
Control measures. Spraying trees and shrubs with a large number of larvae with one of the following preparations: Fufanon, Kemifos, Actellik, Inta-Vir.
Apple sawfly caterpillars: photos and control measures
Apple fruit sawfly Hoplosatra testudinea Clug. - an insect 6-7 mm long. The top of the body is brown, the bottom is yellow, it has two pairs of membranous transparent wings with a network of dark veins. The larva is up to 12 mm long, white, with a brown head and 10 pairs of legs. The pupa is white, in a dense oval cocoon. The larvae overwinter in the soil at a depth of 5-10 and up to 20 cm, and pupate there in the spring. Adult insects emerge from the pupae just before flowering, and mass flight is observed during the flowering period of the apple tree. Apple trees of early varieties are most severely damaged.
Females lay eggs one at a time in sepals or receptacles. The fertility of one female is 50-90 eggs. After 7-14 days, the larvae hatch and gnaw a hole (mine) under the skin of the receptacle obliquely towards the stalk. After 2-3 days, the larva moults and moves into the next fruit, making a direct move to the seed chamber and damaging the seeds.
Older sawfly caterpillars completely eat up the seeds and destroy the seed chamber of the fruit. One larva damages up to 6 fruits. Fruits in which the seed chambers are not damaged continue to develop, but the scarred suberized tissue remains on the fruit in the form of a belt. In June, the larvae finish feeding and go into the soil, where they overwinter in dense earthen cocoons. The damage caused by the sawfly is similar to that of the codling moth.
The difference is that the sawfly larva completely destroys the seed chamber, while the codling moth damages only part of the seeds. The exit holes in fruits damaged by the codling moth are dry and covered with dry excrement and cobwebs. The holes after the sawfly larva emerge remain open and a rusty-red liquid flows out of them. The sawfly larva has a characteristic bad smell. Sawfly larvae feed in early dates, and by mid-summer almost all damaged fruits fall off. With a large number of pests and poor flowering of apple trees, damage can lead to the complete destruction of the crop.
Look at the sawfly caterpillars in the photo, which will help you identify this pest in your garden:
Control measures. Spraying trees just before flowering with one of the following preparations: fufanon, kemifos, actellik, spark, Inta-Vir. Immediately after flowering, spraying is repeated with the same preparations. Collection and deep burial to a depth of 50-70 cm of ovaries damaged by larvae.
How to deal with pear sawfly caterpillars
Pear folded sawfly Micronematus abbreviates Htg. - an insect with a body length of 3.5-4.5 mm, black in color, with transparent wings. The corners of the prodorsum and wing covers are yellow. The legs are black, the knees, fore tibiae and paws are dirty yellow. The larva is yellow or gray-green, lighter on the sides and below, the head is brownish with black fields around the eyes. All segments with two thick transverse folds. The first spiracle is large and black, the rest are white. A pupa in a black-brown cocoon in the ground. The female lays eggs in the main vein of the leaf, and the hatched larvae feed on leaf tissue. Damages apple and pear leaves.
Control measures. Before fighting pear sawfly caterpillars, you need to spray the trees before flowering and immediately after flowering with one of the following drugs: fufanon, kemifos, kinmiks, actellik, spark, Inta-Vir.
- this is the pest that is now eating the leaves of cherries, pears, cherries, quinces, hawthorns, and plums. I don’t know about you, but in the steppe zone of Ukraine, it appeared suddenly and filled the trees. Yesterday we walked around the city in the evening and were horrified. The trees stand as if burned. But if the ends of the branches are damaged during a monilial burn, then we have cherries and pears with completely brown foliage. Between the veins, the surface of the leaf spilled out, the plate looked like lace. And at the end of the month we observed only dark green, slightly blackish slugs(cherry sawfly) about 1 cm in size. But they were actively feeding and now we see what we have. People's inaction is astonishing. Many said that it was a disease on the tree, without even trying to take a closer look and identify the pest. Which is very easy to defeat. One spray was enough for my mother. And almost all the cherry leaves were saved. How will the damaged trees survive the winter now, and will they survive at all? It will be difficult for them. After all, the leaf provides nutrition to the plant and participates in the process of photosynthesis. But this is all a departure from the topic.
Who is this cherry slimy sawfly?? This is an insect, the female of which flies beautifully and is more appearance resembles a fly 5 - 6 mm long, up to 1 cm wide with open wings. But on the leaves we can observe its larvae, small comma-shaped slugs (the front part is enlarged) not green bright color. They have black mucus on their body, so the color is more like a swamp. The female cherry slimy sawfly lays eggs on the underside of the leaf, and even in small undercuts. So they are hidden from view. And although the flight of adult insects falls from mid-June, in the south it is a little earlier, but I think that in our country, due to early warming, everything happened much earlier. After all, it takes one to two weeks for the larva to develop from an egg. And if we compare, the larvae were noticeable and were eating leaves in full swing already at the end of May, which means that the females fledged in the first half of May, somewhere closer to the middle of the month. So I hope for the timing. Everything is changing now due to climate change.
Such a larva will feed for about 20 days. Towards the end, its color will change to yellow and it will fall to the ground. Where at a depth of 5 -15 cm it will pupate and overwinter. Although in some zones it can produce 2, less often 3 generations. The second will fall somewhere in the last month of summer, August. I think this will happen for us, because most likely the cherry slimy sawfly will soon leave for pupation. He will have plenty of time to develop. So you need to prepare.
Pest control methods - Cherry slimy sawfly.
Since the pupa and larva overwinter in the soil, loosening it can help you in the fight. The larva seems to cut down, remove, “lick” the upper surface of the leaf between the veins, leaving a thin transparent layer of the lower side. Therefore, it can be destroyed by any insecticides that act on insects and gnawing pests.
On my property, cherry slimy sawfly larvae were seen on a small pear tree. A piece of tar soap was enough. I infused 1/10 of the bar in water for 6 hours (in a half-liter jar). Then she poured it into a hand sprayer - a spray bottle, increased the volume to 1.5 liters and sprayed the areas with larvae. They died. But I had very few of them.
One of the methods to combat these pests is treatment herbal preparations. But for stickiness, don't forget laundry soap You can even add tar.
