Each year these little red bugs come visit my grow tent, and by visit, I mean they eventually take over if I don’t intervene.
Can anyone help me identify them (and potentially let me know how to treat them other than hand picking them off plants and vacuuming them off the walls)?
they look a fair amount like cochineal, the bug that makes carmine. But maybe less red… maybe in the same family. How red do they look when squashed lol
The basic link to bugguide is too general to help here.
cochineal implies beetles; I don’t think your insects are beetles.
I would need a more close-up picture of an individual to be of more help.
Lacking a better picture, do these insects ever get larger; that is, are the insects in your image a nymphal stage? What is the plant pictured and do these insects stay on just the one plant type?
Any mites in the image would not hold still for that long unless chilled.
cochineal is a scale insect, im not sure it implies beetles
Yours is much more red than the ones in my tent.
I tried to squish one, but they are hard… mostly turned flat.
I got some more close up pictures, but I would need to find my magnifying glass for anything better. They look more brown than red on a white paper (perhaps the red hue is only under my grow lights).
They don’t seem to be picky about leaves. I just picked some off an apple seedling, some turmeric plants, a banana plant, a lime tree, and some clover.
This just reminded me. We used to see these tiny and I mean tiny, red spiders on outside walls. Haven’t seen them for at least two decades.
Try posting on https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsthisbug/ . There’s several entomologists and bug hobbyists on there.
My bad. Cochineal is indeed of the scale insects.
Well, hard rules out scale insects.
Looks more like insect larva to me; I have no idea which one
Honestly im not sure its a bug. It might be some sort of insect frass. I dont see any legs or antennae
…or seeds, for that matter. Soldier fly larva look similar, but should become much larger.
The ones pictured still on the leaf do indeed look to be insects, red and with multiple legs, but the ones on your hand and against the white background look to actually be droppings from an insect.
They’re all the same from what I can tell.
I’m wondering if they’re eggs… to test this out, I have taken some and put them in a container with leaves and water to see if anything happens.
The only thing I know thus far is that they’re not seeds. They appear on top leaves of indoor plants and seem to multiply.
I think those are seeds of Oxalis corniculata. the seed pods explode when touched, launching seeds up to several meters, seems to be no insect.
i dont see legs but the picture is so small i cant fully tell, what are you seeing to confirm legs?
yeah this looks exactly like it tbh
