Mealybug Destroyer
 

A little post showed up on my feed:Mealybug controls at the Conservatory of Flowers

I had tried these once in my long battle against mealy bugs, as I was working in biological control at the time. I did not find them effective in indoor (not greenhouse) conditions. Despite a pretty bad mealy infestation, there were not enough plants, and prey to keep them happy, and I found them wandering all over the living room. At first I thought it was mealies, because the larvae of Cryptolaemus beetles look a lot like mealy bugs!

Second issue was that natural enemies work by suppressing pest populations to a non damaging level and don't eradicate them. These also don't reproduce well in long tailed mealy colonies, so for this to work long term, I would have needed to continue releasing Cryptolaemus at regular intervals, and as much as I love bugs, I didn't want them crawling all over my house all the time.

I've never had a mealy problem. Yes, I've seen them outside. Yes, I've had them hitchhike on new plants (from reputable vendors) but they never took a foothold in my plants. Good thing too, since just seeing them get to me on a visceral level.

Just posted the link in case anyone was interested. And it's good to have your experience.

I agree that is it good info to share, and thought it was also useful to share my experience with them. For people with a greenhouse, they should work well.

I've had mealies for the past 10 years, I've never fully gotten rid of them. I thought that I had finally eradicated them this spring (thanks to OB- people recommended treating with a systemic once a week for a month, with both spraying and pot drenching), until a few weeks ago when I found them all over the large winter squash that I'm storing in our spare bedroom. After some investigating I found the source: a box of candles! A colony of mealies had survived my extermination efforts by hiding in the box, and apparently they can feed and successfully reproduce on candles... : shock: So I now have some on my orchids again, but it's too cold to put them plants outside to spray them (I refuse to use pesticides indoors).

Evolution has been kind to them. They remind me of the aliens in the Alien movies, virtually indestructible. Last year after placing my orchids outside I cheered because I thought I had won the fight. Then I decided to clean my plant stands and found that their fluffy egg cases were nestled out of sight in between the joints of the stands.
Needless to say that I have them again on my plants now that they are indoors. I have also observed that spraying them causes them to immediately lay eggs - basically anywhere, even on the lip of trays and plant stand joints. Another strange thing. I have never seen an intermediate stage. I always see the tiny ones or the adult ones, no sizes in between.
And if you are going to spray, do it when they are active - which is in the middle of the night and never in the day.