This is a summary of comments made by growers mentioned in recent blogs.

Peter Harper

Peter and Teresa near Bauple have an incredible range of fruit trees inside three shade houses covered in fruit fly exclusion netting. Some of the trees are over 15 years old (I think) and they put the netting up about 3-4 years ago in an effort to solve a few issues. However, it created some more. It locked the bugs in so that they ended up with a huge bug problem with Peter typically spotting dozens of bugs every time he went into the orchard - mainly A. lutescens or banana spotting bug - and hardly picked any damage free fruit. He is an organic grower and didn’t even want to use pyrethrum as he thought it would only give very temporary relief...

They started releasing small amounts of Anastatus last year. And in my discussions with Peter over the phone it was clear that this would be an interesting site to watch and Peter was a great observer. So even though this is an uncommon situation we brought him into the case study program and increased the Anastatus release rate at the start of December 2012.

When I visited in March 2014, we only found 5 bugs after looking for about 2 hours. This was a dramatic decline from the “normal” levels in there. Numbers have remained very low and difficult to find since March and he has picked heaps of clean fruit in that time. See the interview here.

Henri Bader has a macadamia farm at Knockrow near Ballina: Henri summed it up:

"We have a long thin farm and where we are releasing the wasps is on the western end and its been high bug damage area for ever. Its surrounded by forest trees.  The harvest data is showing we have much less damage than last year and now its down to about the level of the rest of the farm.

The wasps release end of the farm had one spot spray and a full spray while the east end had one spot spray and 2 full sprays. So, I'm really delighted with the result”.

Ian Hotson said "The harvest data shows that the Anastatus release area has lower damage levels than last year while the untreated, more distant area has 2 to 3 times more damage than the release area and it received 3 sprays for bugs while the wasp area had 2 sprays. So its looking very promising. It would be great if we could do the same or even better next year".

David Brine at Summerland House with No Steps, has a newly rejuvenated avocado block right next to a patch of rainforest and has had “ less damage than expected, especially considering the crop load is low”.

Rick Paine, a macadamia grower near Alstonville said he “had lower than expected damage, in fact almost zero, probably the lowest insect damage I have ever had”. His house area and garden, with lots of bug hosts, is in the middle of his plantation.

Bonnie Walker, an avocado grower near Alstonville, said 2 months ago “We have just started harvesting and at this stage its definitely no worse than last year, and this year I decided not to spray any insecticides. Last year we did 4 spot sprays. Malcombe my farm assistant says there is a lot less bugs this year”.
And just updated: “The bug damage around the area where we have been putting out the wasps is lower than last year and we didn’t spray at all this year”.

Patti & Phil Stacey, grow custard apples and have had “less bug damage than expected, and only had to do one partial spray”. They are right next to a big patch of rainforest.

Cameron Wallace at Bauple writes:

“You can add our experience so far this year to your collection of anecdotal evidence. Over the last two seasons (2011 & 2012) the FSB damage in our orchard has been enormous.  In 2011 we had an average of 3.8% reject attributed to FSB.  In 2012 it was 2.5%.  To date this year we only have factory results for one small consignment, but the FSB damage was 1.3%. This is encouraging.  In each of those seasons we sprayed only twice with Bulldock.  For the current season the second spray was done later than in the previous two seasons.  Otherwise nothing has changed apart from Anastatus releases.”

and following up a few weeks later:

“...after three consignments our insect damage (all attributed to FSB) is running at 0.6%, so a really big improvement over the previous two years.”

Mark Fleming manages a macadamia farm for Dr Austin Curtin at Tregeagle NSW and called up with some feedback:

"We’ve made regular releases of Anastatus over the last year and I believe it has greatly reduced damage caused by FSB. We spend a lot less time on sorting and this has saved us money as well."

Hinkler Park Macadamias have a block right next to houses and a caravan park. The block is not sprayed and typically has a moderate to high level of bug damage. Hinkler’s crop manager Clayton Mattiazzi said: 

“This year the damage was not much different to last year, maybe a little down. We have been releasing Anastatus around the house orchards and an abandoned mango orchard next to the block. Our hope is there will be less overwintering bugs than usual and that there will be less damage next season. We are really supportive of the biological approach, its worked so well with MacTrix".

Russ Hopper a macadamia grower in the Bundaberg area, has had much less damage than last year. Like a lot of farms in Bundaberg area, the main sources of bugs on his farm seems to be fruit trees in house garden mixed orchard. In some areas the bush does not seem to be a source of bugs while in other areas it does.

Bob Maier consults to Dymocks at Nambucca Heads and they have a high bug damage block and as there are houses very close by they decided not to spray this block at all this year. He said that the damage has been much lower in the release area, more like the other part of the farm and he had expected it to be “hammered”.