Applying Encarsia Formosa.

A couple of weeks ago I got some Encarsia Formosa which is a parasitic wasp for controlling whitefly indoors. Today I will show you how they arrived and what I then had to do with them.

The package arrives and the first thing that you notice is the label warning of livestock in the envelope.

Thankfully the enclosed livestock are very small and not likely to stampede or anything once released from the package.

In the package there are a few leaflets telling how to apply the Encarsia

Which are stuck on to ten small cards, at this point they are living in whitefly pupae, sixty per card.

The Encarsia eventually hatch and then fly off looking for fresh whitefly pupae to infect and so this goes on until there will hopefully be no more whitefly left. I have to say that at the moment there is not much sign of this happening anytime soon but I guess you have to be patient.
To deploy the Encarsia you hang the cards on the plants and that’s it, job done.

By the way don’t worry about the Encarsia, they don’t hurt people, in fact they’re that small you can’t even see them, they aren’t like the big black and yellow wasps you see in the garden or house.