The unusually cold late-fall and early-winter weather figures
to kill off a lot of
overwintering insects.

But bug-busting freezes may be more of a mixed blessing for
farmers and homeowners
alike nowadays, said David Jones, an entomologist with the
University of Georgia Extension
Service.

"Any insects that overwinter as adults are definitely
hurt by freezing
weather," Jones said.

"We had a mild winter last year and some very high
insect populations during the
growing season," Jones said. "So overall, the below-
normal temperatures should
help us."

The biggest losers among insect pests may be stinkbugs, a
serious pest of cotton, corn
and soybeans, which all figure to be important crops in Georgia
this year.

"I’m convinced that stinkbugs are going to be a serious
pest in cotton,"
Jones said. "But they overwinter as adults, and they should
definitely be hurt by the
cold this winter."

The bad news for cotton growers is that bollworms, which
overwinter as pupae in the
soil, aren’t normally hurt by freezing weather.

"They’re not hurt unless the farmer tills the field
during the winter, bringing up
the pupae and exposing them to the cold," Jones said.
"Farmers use to do that,
but they don’t do it much anymore."

Making the news about bollworms even worse is that many
beneficial insects, which help
control the bollworm populations, overwinter as adults and will
likely enter the next
growing season with reduced numbers.

Bollworms are actually two species of caterpillars, corn
earworms and tobacco budworms.
And with corn acreage predicted to be much higher this year
(because of good corn prices),
Jones figures many more corn earworms could be coming out of
corn into cotton during the
season.

"Cotton growers are going to have to watch carefully for
bollworms," Jones
said.

Many cotton growers will be planting Bt cotton, a genetically
engineered variety that
acts as its own insecticide against bollworms. But Jones said
these farmers need to
continue to scout their cotton carefully for secondary insect
pests.

Beet armyworms, which devastated areas of Texas cotton and
seriously damaged some
Georgia fields last year, generally overwinter in tropical
climates and could be later
arriving in Georgia because of the cold winter, Jones said.

But homeowners who are counting on the hard winter to knock
back numbers of fire ants
may be disappointed.

"Fire ants have become acclimatized to Georgia," he
said. "When these
freezes come, they just go deeper into the soil to survive. Mole
crickets will do that,
too."

Jones said the severity of farmers’ insect problems this year
will depend on more than
the cold we’ve already had.

"A lot of things influence insect populations," he
said. "Dry weather
hurts farmers more than anything with insects. But overall, I
think a hard winter helps us
out."