What’s Happening Here?
I love nature and I love flowers, but I don’t appreciate when nature messes with my flowers. Check out this honeysuckle. I have a beautiful trellis with honeysuckle I planted a couple years ago and it was just getting into full, prime bloom and looking incredible. I noticed this problem about a week ago:
The symptoms were subtle and somewhat isolated at first, but I instantly knew what it was. I wasn’t overly concerned about it, but that all changed about one week later when it appeared across the entire plant and was preventing the flowers from developing normally.
I can see that I wasn’t the only one who had a busy week—whatever is behind this problem was quite busy, too. Do you know what quickly caused my beautiful honeysuckle to turn not so beautiful? Stay tuned and I’ll reveal the answer shortly ...
2025 Biosolutions Guide
The third edition of the GrowerTalks Biosolutions Guide has been released. Hopefully, you’ve either received a hard copy of the supplement in the June 2025 issue of GrowerTalks or were able to download a digital copy of the guide from links you’ve received from other fine Ball Publishing newsletters.
If you haven’t seen the guide yet, you can download your own digital copy for FREE here: 2025 GrowerTalks Biosolutions Guide.
The interest in biosolutions pest and disease management strategies isn't waivering and continues to pick up some steam each year. With each year that passes, the Biosolutions Guide evolves and offers fresh, new content to help guide you through your own biosolutions journey, as I like to call it. The first edition focused on the benefits and practical applications of biosolutions; the second edition dove a little further, exploring best practices and shared some biofungicide research; and this edition tackles supply chain logistics and viability of BCAs.
Here’s a rundown of what’s inside the newest biosolutions edition:
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Making the Move: What can you do to ease the transition to a more biologically based approach to pest and disease management?
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It’s NOT All or Nothing: An argument for a hybrid approach to IPM in ornamentals.
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Bioinsecticides Efficacy Table
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The Impact of Logistics on BCA Product Quality: Transportation of BCA products from insectary to farm has a large impact on product quality.
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Biofungicides Efficacy Table
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Assessing Your Biological Workforce: Step-by-step quality control tests you can perform in-house.
If you currently use or have interest in using BCAs, bioinsecticides or biofungicides, I highly recommned you check out the current guide:
2025 GrowerTalks Biosolutions Guide.
Since each guide contains great content from other industry experts, I also recommend downloading and reveiwing the great information contained in the previous editions:
I'm hopeful you’ll find the information in these guides to be useful and inspiriing. Feel free to download each of them so you can have these references on hand as you navigate through your biolsolutions journey.
Please let me (
paul@opelgrowers.com) or Bill Calkins (
bcalkins@ballhort.com) know if you have any bioslolutions topics you’d like to see covered, expereinces you’d like to share, news on new products and/or research results to pass along.
There’s a New Beauveria In Town
BioWorks have worked with the entomopathogentic fungus Beauveria bassiana for controlling greenhouse pests for over two decades. They're in the process of introducing an exciting new strain (BW149), which is different from the other strains on the market (strain GHA in BotaniGard and strain PPRI 5339 in Velifer).
The new bioinsecticide is being marketed as Principle WP and has shown great efficacy on several pests, including aphids, caterpillars, mealybugs, thrips and whiteflies.
Thrips on Greenhouse Zinnia
Four spray applications were applied at seven-day intervals in the trial results displayed above. The researchers observed:
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No plant phytotoxicity was observed during the study
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All Principle WP rates significantly reduced thrips populations by Day 28 by over 70%
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Principle WP outperformed the competitive Beauveria WP standard at all time intervals
Besides the efficacy data, which speaks for itself, other key attributes of Principle WP are:
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Wettable powder formulation
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Four-hour restricted entry ineterval (REI)
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Zero-day pre-harvest interval (PHI)
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OMRI listed
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Excellent crop safety
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No refrigeration necessary
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Principle WP was released after the third edition of the Biosolutions Guide hit the press, so, unfortunately, it’s not in the guide, but Principle WP is another useful tool in the biosolutions arena for growers to manage their pests. Go to
Principle WP to learn more about this new product from BioWorks.
Trade Events for June and July
There are several great trade events coming up. Here are the ones I thought you’d find the most meaningful. Click on the name of the event to view details of the event.
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June 19-21, 2025 |
FNGLA Annual Convention
Orlando, Florida |
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June 23-24, 2025 |
Tennessee Green Industry Expo
Lebanon, Tennessee
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June 25, 2025 |
Dallas Arboretum’s Plant Trials Field Day
Dallas, Texas
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June 27, 2025 |
New Blooms Saskatchewan
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
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July 12-15, 2025 |
Cultivate‘25
Columbus, Ohio
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July 22-23, 2025 |
Lucas Greenhouse Summer Trial
Monroeville, New Jersey
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July 24-25, 2025 |
Ball Seed Customer Days
West Chicago, Illinois
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July 25-27, 2025 |
Caladium Festival and Annual Car & Bike Show
Lake Placid, Florida
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July 28-31, 2025 |
Perennial Plant Association National Symposium
Des Moines, Iowa
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July 28 – August 1, 2025 |
ASHS Annual Conference
New Orleans, Louisianna
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July 28-August 8, 2025 |
Michigan Garden Tour
Various Locations
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The Answer is ...
I showed these images of an issue I’m experiencing on honeysuckle I have growing on a trellis in my backyard. A little over a week ago I noticed a few of the newly developing flowers appeared abnormal and about a week later my jaw dropped at how widespread and significant this issue became. Here’s a couple more images showing more advanced stages of this issue:
If you weren’t able to see the cause of the flower distortion in the initial images, I think you can see it now. That’s right—aphids are feasting on my honeysuckle flowers. I didn’t have them identified, but coincidentally, there are a couple of honeysuckle aphids I believe are responsible for this damage.
What Can I "Dew" About This?
There are two common species of honeysuckle aphids: Hyadaphis tataricae and Hyadaphis passerinii.
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Hyadaphis passerinii are grayish green with a waxy body. The antennae, legs and cornicles are black.
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Hyadaphis tataricae are yellowish green to brownish yellow and coated with greyish wax powder. Their legs, antennae and cornicles tend to match the color of their bodies.
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Based on the images above, the cornicles are black and the legs are usually dark, however, sometimes there appear to be aphids with dark cornicles and lighter legs. I’m not an entomologist and haven't had these aphids identified, but it appears my honeysuckle are very attractive host plants to Hyadaphis passerinii.
Many of the leaves are covered with honeydew or waste excretions from the aphids, causing the leaves to appear shiny.
What can I “dew” about them? At this point, I’ve missed the best opportunity for controlling them. The best time would've been when their populations were much, much lower and before significant damage was present. At this point, the damage is severe, and with the leaf and flower twisting and cupping, there are lots of hiding spots that will shield them from spray applications.
My approach at this point is to try to get control of the aphids while trying not to impact the beneficial population. My plan is to make a couple of applications of
EpiShield (a bioinsecticide comprised of botanical oils) to knock down their populations. Hopefully, this will be enough and I won’t have to bring out the big guns.
My email is paul@opelgrowers.com if you have any comments, article suggestions or if you'd just like to say hello.
Best regards,
Paul Pilon
Editor-at-Large—Perennial Pulse
Director of Growing—Opel Growers
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