Dear All, In addition to what I wrote, Imidacloprid and some other Neonicotinoids have been banned in the European community for a certain length of time. They seem to be responsible for the dramatic loss in honey bees but also other insects which results in the loss of birds and other animals along the food chain. During the ban it will be assessed if there will be recovery or if there are more factors causing loss in insects. Personally I think there are. One other main problem with Imidacloprid is its very long time of active toxicity. This means that its activity is only very slowly decreasing in the treated plants. But during this time insects are able to build up resistance to small amounts of toxic residues still in the plant and thus render the product useless for certain pests. Pseudococcidae belong to those insects which are capable to become resistant. I also want to state that I do not like to use insecticide. I do not promote it but I tried to answer a question of a PBS member by sharing my experience. Before I moved to Portugal I had a tremendous problem with both mealy bugs and root mealy bugs in my greenhouse. Traditional non toxic methods did NOT work, I tried many. I felt a strong responsibility not to introduce these pests into my new garden which is in a very intact, very biodiverse and therefore practically pest free environment. Some hard decisions had to be taken, many plants were discarded. So far my strategy has worked, without losing the biodiversity in my new garden. Bye for today Uli _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…