The great Palm weevil temp experiment

[Stevetoad]

In an effort to see how much cold these spawns of satan can handle I devised a very scientific experiment to preform in them. I caught 3 South American palm weevils put them each in a tube and placed one in my freezer at 0f, one in my refrigerator at 35f and one in a cooler with ice and salt and was able to hold the temperature between 26-28f. Here are the results…

freezer at 0f for 1 hour (dead)

refrigerator at 35f for 12 hours (alive) 40 hours (alive)

salt / ice at 26-28f for 12 hours (alive) 40 hours (still alive) 

not a great outcome being that those temps would do a bunch of damage on its own.  
 

 

 

 

[tinman10101]

i love experiments steve.  the analyst in me is perplexed why your salt below 32F did not kill the beetle.  i guess there are many variables including sustaining the temps at 26-28F and not all beetles are created equal comes to mind or possibly your freezer is set to way below 0F (ie ... <26F).  regardless, cool experiment and sad that you have that many in your yard to participate in your experiment.  i live north of LA and just anticipating the gradual migration northwards.  

[LJG]

Things are ridiculously resilient. In some of my traps, then I forget to put a killing agent in the water they swim for seven plus days before finally dying and drowning.

[Stevetoad]

52 minutes ago, tinman10101 said:

i love experiments steve.  the analyst in me is perplexed why your salt below 32F did not kill the beetle.  i guess there are many variables including sustaining the temps at 26-28F and not all beetles are created equal comes to mind or possibly your freezer is set to way below 0F (ie ... <26F).  regardless, cool experiment and sad that you have that many in your yard to participate in your experiment.  i live north of LA and just anticipating the gradual migration northwards.  

Unfortunately they are on the way. one of my shops is in Mission Viejo and I have seen the evil weevil damage as far up as san Clemente and that's without actively looking around.  You can see some damaged CIDP in the Cristianitos creek by trestles.  

in hindsight the freezer is. a bit of a stupid test as those temps would kill a palm outright anyway.  The 26-28f falls inline with what my yard has seen as its record low so im a bit upset that there wasn't death. Im sure the weevils nuzzle into a warmer area too. 

 

[Stevetoad]

3 minutes ago, LJG said:

Things are ridiculously resilient. In some of my traps, then I forget to put a killing agent in the water they swim for seven plus days before finally dying and drowning.

You're not kidding. Ive had them eating the apple chunks fully submerged. In my area they took out a CIDP and now there is a queen and a washy that have collapsed crowns that are no more than 5o yards from the CIDP stump. It may be a coincidence but it's awfully fishy and concerning if true.