I haven’t seen any Cranefly should I still apply Aceleprn?

I'm getting asked this question alot.

I've bought my Acelepryn, waited for peak flight and I just haven't seen any.......

  • Should I wait?
  • Should I apply now?
  • Should I not use it?

Ok lets start at the beginning, any Acelepryn purchased under the Emergency Authorisation for Cranefly in 2021 must be used by the 29th November 2021 and any remaining stock can only be held until 27th December 2021 before it must be disposed of in the correct manner. Label / EA link here.....

So its important than when purchasing the product you consider why you're purchasing it. The stewardship form makes it clear that the reasons for applicatication are either Historic damage or High levels of pest activity. So this is something that should have been discussed and considered when talking about the purchase with a BASIS registered advisor. Many orders would have been placed pre cranefly emergence based on the fact they have seen high historic numbers and they recognise that there putting surfaces are an area of high risk.

Even though we may not have seen many cranefly a few of them are very capable of laying a lot of eggs.

Dan at Newquay (who's quickly becoming known as the pied piper of Craneflys) inadvertently created this Cranefly trap in a bucket in his back garden.

Whilst there are quite a few cranefly in there, they are not all females - remember the females have a pointy abdomen and the males have a stumpy abdomen.

In the bottom of the bucket you can see how many eggs they have been laid. This is the best visual image I've seen of how just a few cranefly can lay many eggs

If those eggs have suitable conditions to establish themselves it can cause devastating effects.

This is a great example of how even though we may not have seen many a few stray Cranefly that have escaped our attention could have laid several thousands of eggs without us knowing.

So assuming we consider our greens a high risk area (which looking at the industry problems we saw this Spring is absolutely justifiable).

And we've seen historic damage or activity then application should take place and we need to consider our application timings without the guidance of a mass cranefly flight.

That is exactly why we put PestTracker in place - PestTracker link here...... and we continue to offer application advice Latest blog on timing here......

With the support from industry reporting PestTracker and based on this years flight pattern I'd advise application of Acelepryn in the best spray day in the last 2 weeks of October.

Can we apply acelepryn yet? We're getting pretty close looking at the PestTracker sightings.

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