Scale Bugs ... Yuck!

What are scale?

Scale bugs, superfamily Coccoidea, are agricultural pests with approximately 8,000 described species. There is a lot of variety in these Arthropods, ranging from minute organisms, only a millimeter or so, to five millimeters. All are covered by a wax that protects them from harm.

Female scale insects are almost always immobile after settling down and growing their shell to feed. Adult males are a lot smaller and usually have wings. Since their only purpose in life is to fertilize the females and reproduce, they only live one or two days and never feed. What a life!

Before settling down, the females are in a stage called instars. After emerging from the egg with functional legs, instars are informally called crawlers. As soon as they are out of the egg they crawl (geddit?) to a favorable spot to feed and live out their lives.

Most of Coccoidea are parasites to plants, but some species live on the opposite end of the spectrum. Some species. like genus Newsteadia, feed on fungi instead of plants. Scale bugs are not so picky with their victims, it seems....

Scale is a serious pest to agricultural crops. Insecticides are able to kill instars, but adult waxy coating protects them from insecticides, so other methods are used to exterminate these little rascals after they have developed their adult shells.

Horticultural oils can be used to suffocate them, chemicals that poison the juices of the host plants, or introducing predators to the scale. Parasitoid wasps and Coccinellid beetles, which eat the scale. If you have scale infested plant nearby an ant colony, the ants will also eat the scale.

In conclusion, Coccoidea is a pesky superfamily, full of various sap-suckers that are pests inside our houses and farms. Chemicals and biological control can be used to prevent them from entering our houses and eating our beloved plants alive, and scale have a interesting system of sexual reproduction.