Island Bug War

The classic method of bug control--fight bug with bug--is still the best, cleanest and most economical. When it works ideally, the first bug is eliminated, and the second dies of starvation. More commonly, both bugs survive, reduced to harmlessness.

Hawaii's Territorial Board of Agriculture and Forestry, troubled by two new pests, hoped that the old method would work again. The pests: 1) the anacamptodes moth, a bright little creature whose larvae have riddled the islands' main forage crops; 2) the pineapple mealy bug, a small, white, wingless sapsucker that might wilt every pineapple plant in Hawaii if costly spraying were halted.

Recently Noel Krauss, one of the Board's young entomologists, left Honolulu on a one-year hunt for suitable parasites. First stop was California, where last year he found new and rare species of wasps gobbling up anacamptodes larvae. Samples sent back produced no offspring --apparently they were unfertilized females. Next stop will be Central America, original home of the pineapple, and presumably of the pineapple mealy bug. Here again entomologist Krauss will seek new species.

Twice since 1900 the Hawaiian sugar industry has been seriously threatened by bugs: 1) the sugar-cane leaf hopper was brought under control by parasites imported from New Guinea, Australia and China; 2) the anomola beetle was eventually laid low by a bug from Manila. A dramatic victory was won over the voracious avocado mealy bug, a native of Mexico. One of his old enemies was brought over from Mexico, and now both bug and parasite have disappeared.

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