My house is infested. Luckily, you wouldn't really notice if you were to visit. Yes, there is the occasional almost invisible fungus gnat flying around but they are harmless (unless you have a worm bin).
The infestation I speak of are mealybugs. These little guys are not so harmless. They are a type of unarmored scale insect which feed on the plant juices and excrete honeydew like aphids. That last part is why I'm grateful we don't have ants. Ants will gather around them, protecting then and 'milking' them for honeydew. (The odorous house ants seemed to have left of their own accord, though possibly in response to me moving Leia's food to higher ground.)
Where did the mealybugs come from?
No one knows. I used to blame my mom because I first noticed them a few years back on some of her plants in the living room. However, the mystery citrus tree also lives there during the winter. It's possible that the citrus tree attracted some while living in its summer home (outdoors) and then I inadvertantly brought them inside. So it could very well be my fault actually...
I occasionally do a sweep on this tree and pick off any I see. They love to cluster in crevices like at the node on a stem or sometimes directly on a leaf's vein.
I was going to offer my sister some home grown blue fingerling potatoes but I noticed small little tufts of white fluffy stuff (not shown).
Here, they cluster around the potatoes 'eyes' and love the shoots when they sprout.
The fluffy stuff I mentioned is a type of silk, I'd imagine, that the insect itself spins for its own protection. I read that some species are known to play their eggs in these little cotton balls. I think my culprit species does this because when I rub the silk clumps between my fingers, they get covered in red, which I assume is the blood and guts of 50 to 100 nymphs.
They are aesthetically pleasing though, at least the large ones. I like their dorsal stripe as well as their tentacle-like appendages. These are all females. Today I finally saw what the males look like. They are sexually dimorphic, meaning the two sexes are physiologically different. The males are grey, have wings, and only have two long appendages at the end of the abdomen. They actually looked like giant springtails.
And now you're probably still wondering about the title. Remember earlier when I said these insects' guess are red? Well, they are apparently the main ingredient in certain red food colorings. Cool? Or gross? I think it's pretty cool and even sustainable? Perhaps in the future more food products will be sourced from insects. They are, after all, incredibly abundant; ants alone make up more biomass on the planet than humans.
That's food for thought.
Control
The best thing to do is probably pick them off by hand. This, however, is very time consuming. I'm sure Neem oil would kill them but the neem spray I have always kills the plant as well. If picking them by hand, make sure to be thorough. Luckily, these are not fast little buggers. They can barely crawl on their tiny little legs. Their best defense is you not noticing them.
Hopefully I got them all, or else my potatoes will continue to suffer. I might just have to eat them all instead of saving half to plant next year.
Have you ever seen these little nuisances?
Do you know any other names for them?
How do you control them?