The bear (from the Latin Gryllotalpa) is a small insect. It can damage the roots and appendages of plants, fruits and bulbs, seeds. Fighting a bear becomes for many gardeners a matter of paramount importance - it causes a lot of problems. For agriculture, three species of bear have become special pests:
- ordinary;
- single-spiked;
- Far Eastern.
The fight with the bear has its own difficulties - this insect moves freely in the water, flies through the air at night, and is better oriented than the mole in the ground. It got its name for the clumsiness and dark brown body of adult pests. Young individuals, in turn, were called the “top” for the grayish color of young insects, and for the presence of claws and dentate files - “earthen cancer”. The insect of the bear hibernates remarkably at a depth of up to 120 cm. The mounds from rolled up lumps of soil indicate the presence of the pest on the beds. When spring comes, the bear wakes up from hibernation in search of food. In May and June, pests appear on the surface during the breeding season. A bear is an insect that seeks to lay as many eggs as possible. A nest for future offspring is built at a depth of 10-20 cm, where dark yellow eggs (300-500 pieces) are laid. A brood appears after 2 weeks, settling in the garden, greenhouses and getting its own food.
Fighting the Bear
One of the effective ways to deal with the pest is early and deep plowing and loosening of the soil to a depth of 15 cm. This method destroys the bear’s moves, does not give the opportunity to get food, destroys the larvae. In order not to attract pests from the surrounding places, it is not recommended to feed the soil and plants with fresh mullein. To scare off an insect, you can breed bird droppings, watering them with land in dry weather. Close the road from neighboring sections will help marigold sown on the border, the smell of which does not tolerate the bear. Hunting pits are dug up in the fall, when the soil temperature drops to +8 degrees. The depth of such holes is 50-60 cm (2 holes per 100 square meters). A film is attached to the walls of the pit and is not completely filled with rotted manure. Medvedka climbs into pits for the winter, and upon the onset of persistent frosts, along with manure it is scattered on the surface of the earth, where it dies from the cold. Hunting pits are also prepared in the spring for catching larvae, the filler is fresh manure or chopped straw. Heaps can also be scattered on the ground, where the bears crawl for the next laying. Hatching, the larvae do not leave their nests and feed on manure. After 3 weeks, manure with larvae is burned or raked in special pits.
Chemical protection against insect pests is applied if other methods are no longer effective. The carcinogenic preparation “Thunder” or “Phenaxin” in granules is poured into the passages of the bear and sprinkled with earth. Grains of rye, corn, barley, wheat are steamed before swelling and sprinkled with aldrin (50 g per 1 kg) and instilled to a depth of 3-5 cm. This must be done before the emergence of young seedlings, otherwise the bear will eat young plants. Insects by smell find the bait and, having eaten, die. Dead pests are collected from the surface so that the birds do not poison. In the summer, the little bears pour a little sunflower oil into the passages, and then water. The insect creeps up and dies. You can catch pests in water jars buried at soil level. You can also fill the bear’s moves with soapy water by dissolving 50 g of laundry detergent or 10 g of laundry soap in a bucket of water . 0.5 liter of solution is poured into the hole, after which the bear dies underground or gets to the surface.
Thus, the fight with the bear is very real. It is only necessary to competently carry it out.