i found what is eating all of the new growth like crazy i have sent pictures.!!! please help but i dont know what kind of stuff to kill the bugs with!!!!
Hi Patrick, I can't identify your bug (although it looks a little like the white fringe beetle that we used to have as a pest on soybeans), but I can give you several options on killing them. Soapy water is the safest, but you have to be able to spray it directly on the pest (it kills by drowning). The next best choice would be spinosad, it is an extract of a bacterial fermentation and considered organic. It is highly toxic to insects but not mammals, however it is not very persistent ( a few days in sunlight). It's persistence can be imporved by using horticultural oil. The other options are common pesticides such as malathion and permethrin, malathion is not very persistient. Skeet
First step is to identify the bug. I've had a look at a few of the Pests of Florida Citrus from the University of Florida Department of Entomology and Nematology "Featured Creatures", but I wasn't successful (even though I thought I'd made good guesses, I apparently didn't). It does look like a beetle of some sort, so perhaps a search on www.bugguide.net can help pin it down.