Bogue's Bugs

Rush 10,000,000 Hippodamla convergens.

To an entomologist, 10,000,000 Hippodamla convergens means so many ladybird beetles--small, black-stippled yellow inhabitants of California's high Sierras, fond of eating the eggs of the vegetable aphis (louse) which is a scourge of most truck farmers. To Robert Bogue, who is both an entomologist and a businessman, 10,000,000 Hippodamla convergens last week meant the biggest order yet received for his chief stock-in-trade.

Robert Bogue got a pencil, computed how much water would be necessary to keep 10,000,000 comatose ladybirds at the proper humidity during shipment from his bug nursery in Glendale, near Los Angeles, to the cooperative group of Virginia growers who wanted them to patrol some 16,000 acres. Packing case after packing case was withdrawn from the 60x40 ft. cold-storage room, the water carefully doused on the moss in the cases and the huge ladybird army started east under refrigeration. Then Robert Bogue sent a bill for $2,850.

When Entomologist Bogue went to San Bernardino County Hospital to teach after the War, he learned that hordes of the ladybirds were being rounded up in the mountains and brought down to police vegetable gardens in the valleys, but that none were shipped out of California because they were so perishable. He began to experiment. Three years ago he discovered that in a temperature of 42DEG and a constant and definite humidity, the bugs would live indefinitely without feeding, could be shipped long distances. But even when warmed up the ladybird beetle is too temperamental to breed in captivity, so that every one shipped has to be captured. Bogue has squads of men prowling the slopes, shaking the bugs from bushes into boxes. Other eaters of plant-lice he successfully breeds and sells, but the ladybird is his headliner. He ships to all agricultural states, refuses to disclose the names of his customers fearing competition and possible price-cutting. He estimates that a grower can police his land with Bogue ladybirds at a cost of 15-c- or 20-c- per acre as against the dollar or more that spraying would cost.

Chicago-born 35 years ago, Robert Bogue graduated from Northwestern in parasitology, went to Johns Hopkins, later to the University of London's college of physiology and medical entomology. When War came he went to France to supervise latrine sanitation, iodization and chlorination of water, delousing. Using a pipette constantly he occasionally got a mouthful of tainted blood. That and the gum-hardening effect of precautionary alcohol gargles lost him all but a few of his teeth. He is married, has two children.

All over the U. S. last week Department of Agriculture agents were pushing an intensive campaign against insect pests. Catastrophic visitations like the Buffalo gnat swarm which descended on Arkansas last month (TIME, May 7) usually catch entomologists as well as farmers off guard, but against better known enemies spring surveys are conducted to find out how they survived the winter. Reports this year were far from heartening. Grasshoppers, No. 1 bane of Northwestern grain farmers, got through a mild winter in enormous numbers. Chinch bug mortality in the Midwest was only 3%. In Indiana and Kansas 93% of Hessian flies emerged unscathed from their underground puparia. Millions of Mormon crickets came safely through in Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming. Montana. Bitter cold in the East caused high mortality among some destructive insects, but the Japanese beetle was protected by heavy snows and promised to be dangerous. Special funds allocated this year to cope with these pests:

Grasshopper $5,000,000

Chinch bug 3,000,000

Japanese beetle 500,000

Mormon cricket 50,000

The Federal bug-fighters hoped that last month's great dust storm (TIME, May 21) would play havoc with pests as well as with crops. Nevertheless they went out to do battle with sprays, dusting, barriers, poison, traps, burning.

This spring the Bureau of Entomology organized a Division of Foreign Parasite Introduction which will search Japan, France and Austria for parasitic enemies of insects that have invaded the U. S. from those countries. Of parasites which have already proved their worth hundreds of thousands were loosed from government insectaries. One star performer is Trichogramma minutum, a small species of wasp which lays its own eggs inside the eggs of the codling moth, oriental fruit moth, European corn borer, pecan nut case bearer, Angoumois grain moth, many another.

Promisingly vulnerable to parasites is the Japanese beetle, a handsome bronze and bottle-green creature smaller than a June bug. Experimenters have found that maggots of the Prosena fly and Tiphia wasp will destroy the Japanese beetle grub if they have access to it.

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