Help!! Cycad scale infestation 🫠

[TropicsEnjoyer]

Hey everyone I need help finding an efficient way to deal with cycad scale. I’m asking not for my own sagos but for those of a friend, as I recently noticed an early stage scale infestation and want to deal with it before it gets out of control. After a bit of research I concluded I could make a neem oil spray and just have them buy Bonide systemic insecticide granules. Would this be effective? Any other recommendations welcome, as long as they are things that are easy to come by/ not too expensive. Also I would like to know if these same measures could be applied to a pygmy date palm. 

Sorry I don’t have pictures, but as of now the scale is mostly at the base of the leaves. They are small sagos btw.

[Silas_Sancona]

19 minutes ago, TropicsEnjoyer said:

Hey everyone I need help finding an efficient way to deal with cycad scale. I’m asking not for my own sagos but for those of a friend, as I recently noticed an early stage scale infestation and want to deal with it before it gets out of control. After a bit of research I concluded I could make a neem oil spray and just have them buy Bonide systemic insecticide granules. Would this be effective? Any other recommendations welcome, as long as they are things that are easy to come by/ not too expensive. Also I would like to know if these same measures could be applied to a pygmy date palm. 

Sorry I don’t have pictures, but as of now the scale is mostly at the base of the leaves. They are small sagos btw.

Take a look over this article:.. https://dengarden.com/gardening/the-compleat-gardener-killing-cycad-scale-with-coffee-grounds

Have heard of similar results in the past.

[Gallop]

11 hours ago, TropicsEnjoyer said:

Hey everyone I need help finding an efficient way to deal with cycad scale. I’m asking not for my own sagos but for those of a friend, as I recently noticed an early stage scale infestation and want to deal with it before it gets out of control. After a bit of research I concluded I could make a neem oil spray and just have them buy Bonide systemic insecticide granules. Would this be effective? Any other recommendations welcome, as long as they are things that are easy to come by/ not too expensive. Also I would like to know if these same measures could be applied to a pygmy date palm. 

Sorry I don’t have pictures, but as of now the scale is mostly at the base of the leaves. They are small sagos btw.

 

 

[Merlyn]

I tried neem oil when I got a couple of Revoluta ~6 or 7 years ago, all it managed to do was burn the leaves to a toasty crisp brown in the sun.  I'd avoid doing that.    I do a 4 step method:

1.  Wash off the fronds with a regular hose end sprayer.  The adults are immobile once they form the hard shell.  So if you knock them off the plant they can't climb back up and find a new spot to feed.  The immature "crawler" stage will crawl back up.
2. After the plant has dried, I spray with either Acephate or Malathion to kill off the crawlers.  Acephate is partially systemic and will probably help too.  This helps to break the life cycle.
3. Soil drench with Dinotefuran.  I use Alpine WSG, though there are others like Safari.  I read conflicting reports on Imadicloprid...some said it worked, some said it was ineffective, some said it knocked them back but didn't completely kill off the scale.  Alpine WSG is about 2.2g = 1 flat teaspoon per 1 gallon drench, so it goes a long way.  I find that a drench lasts about 2 years before scale starts popping up again.
4. Coffee grounds sprinkled around the base.  I drink a lot of espresso, so I always have extra grounds.  I did an experiment with a batch of 9 or 10 small sago pups.  I had separated them off of a big 6' tall trunk and replanted them around a small CIDP in the front yard.  I cleaned them all of scale using the above method, and then a year later noted some scale growing back on all of them.  I put a small amount of grounds on one clump of 3 pups, a large amount on another clump of 3 pups, and none on the third clump.  The coffee grounds definitely controlled the growth of scale in proportion to how much grounds I put on them.  I wouldn't say it "cured" any of the pups, but it sure helped.  There's not a whole lot of caffeine left in espresso grounds.  One day I need to buy some light roast non-Arabica to get maximum caffeine, and sprinkle just the raw coffee around an infested plant to see what happens.  I'd bet the "caffeine pills" would work too...   

My neighbors across the street have three clumps of 4-6' tall Revoluta, and they are randomly covered in scale snow.  So it's inevitable that even if I had all of my 90 Cycas completely clean...they'd be infested again in a year or two.

[GeneAZ]

I've used Talstar-P for years with great success.  You do have to use a surfactant like Dawn detergent, but it does the job in two applications.  It gets into the leaf-base crevices where the re-infestations usually come from.  You can tell it's working in about a month because the bodies of the scale can be crushed without any bodily juices coming out.  You can get it at diypestcontrol.com.  As a drench, it also works on root mealy.

[TropicsEnjoyer]

On 6/10/2025 at 10:14 AM, Gallop said:

 

 

Hey so I told my friend to buy this. He got it delivered recently and we decided to give it a go today. But first off, this stuff might be the worst thing i’ve ever smelled, absolute rancid fart bomb is the way I would describe it. The odor consumed the entire garage. Anyway, since it is a spray and the measurements are a bit hard to decipher I did about 1/2 tsp for 16oz spray as a start. 
 

I must have been a bit hasty though because I overlooked the fact that this is not really meant for use as a drench, which is what I would have preferred. Is there any way to mix this into a drench form? And how effective is this as a standalone treatment?

 

I sprayed most of the leaf undersides. How quickly should I be seeing the effects?

Thanks everyone for their suggestions.