Hello,

so today we are going to talk about the cucumber beetle.

I know this is kind of not a timely one.

This is not a plant that most of us are growing at this point in the year, but it's kind of an interesting

beetle that I figured I would cover because, you know, eventually we're all going to be growing cucumbers at some point

this next coming year and I figured let's prime our brains to watch

out for these little bugs and see if we can stop them before they even attack us

right that's the whole point of pest prevention in the first place.

Why deal with pests when you can just prevent them in the first place?

So, what is the cucumber beetle?

Well, there are two different, there are two different insects that we typically are considering cucumber beetles and one is is from the diabrotica genera and one is from the acalima genera again butchering that Latin. Both are part of the same family though, which has many

different beetle species. And so almost all cucumber beetles, one of the problems with

them is that they transmit plant

diseases as well. So they transmit a wilt, bacterial wilt, and they'll transmit the

cucumber mosaic virus so they can not only eat your plants but they will also eat and poison them.

So it's a double whammy and they are quite annoying.

Fortunately, prevention of them is relatively simple

and they're quite easy to spot as well.

Both spot and identify.

So the first one we're going to talk about is the Diabrotica Virgifera,

which is also known as the Western Corn Rootworm. This one has

stripes so it has three black stripes going down the back of its back and it's a very deadly one so it's super deadly for corn it's a

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