Grasshoppers attacked crops, paint on barns and a lot of other targets during waves of hatchings.
A Calgary flour mill was shut down to clean out tiny insects that strayed in from local fields.
Snow shovels were used to remove seed bugs from a Medicine Hat, Alta., shopping mall.
Diamondback moths across the West were reported in huge numbers, but some farmers found the damage was slight, even without spraying.
This has been the year of the bug in Western Canada, with most crop pests making an appearance.
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“And it’s not over, by a long way,” said Sherwood Park, Alta., entomologist Jim Jones of Western Pest Management.
“Farmers need to keep watching their crops, especially later canola … and fall-seeded cereals. Those crops are not out of the woods yet. There are a lot of caterpillar insects. And (farmers) have to start thinking about the effect this season is going to have on next year,” he said.
Insect problems in 2003 “didn’t just happen. They develop over time,” said Lloyd Dosdall, an Alberta Agriculture entomologist.
The seed bugs that infested the mill, mall and convenience store parking lots of southern Alberta appear to have lost their navigational abilities due to heavy smoke from forest fires in British Columbia and Alberta.
Already in high numbers due to good moisture conditions and a healthy previous season, the insects, which normally spend the summer season feeding on immature grass seed, appear to rely on polarized light to provide navigation signals.
Dan Johnson, an entomologist with Agriculture Canada in Lethbridge, thinks the light from industrial and retail facilities caught the attention of the insects and may have became surrogate beacons.
Beet webworms are showing up from Manitoba to Alberta, but are heaviest in areas where weeds were uncontrolled in 2002.
Dosdall said lygus bugs are another crop pest that benefited from last years’ drought in Alberta and western Saskatchewan.
“They weren’t sprayed last year and this year, their numbers are up,” he said.
Ross Mackenzie of Alberta Agriculture said the conditions for heavy cabbage seedpod weevil populations are present, but crop losses have been avoided in many areas.
“As the crop pests increase so do their parasites and predators. Insects come in cycles and part of those cycles are pests’ pests,” he said.
Three tiny wasp species are reaching what may be record numbers in Western Canada, “but no one was counting before,” said Dosdall.
The diagema insulare, necremnus duplicatus and trichomalus perfectus all are attacking crop pests, “providing control for free.”
Just how much control isn’t known yet, but entomologists say it may be substantial and could lead to more discoveries for biological control of crop pests.
Diagema insulare attack diamondback moths and were so thick at some research stations in central Alberta that the tiny black bugs clogged the yellow adhesive cards used to study insect populations.
“Never that many in that area,” said Dosdall.
“There are a lot of new things going on. It could even be climate change.”
Extremely dry conditions have reduced the presence of fungi that parasitize grasshoppers, which may result in even higher hopper populations next year.
Jones said farmers will “need to look hard at their own farms and get a plan together to deal with their insects year in and year out. It’s only getting more complicated.”
Dosdall sums it up: “It’s a good year to be an entomologist, and a bug.”
