Turf Reports: Insect Control 2024

There is hope that the war against two of the more destructive insect pests on annual bluegrass and bentgrass — the annual bluegrass weevil and the pathogenic nematodes — will be won. Each year, golf course superintendents fight to fortify turfgrass plant health, ensuring it will remain playable. But the invasive insect pests can be quick to adapt, which is why it’s important the industry talk about research and best practices to control the annual bluegrass weevil (ABW) and pathogenic nematodes. By controlling pests together, we can continue to grow healthy turfgrass to further grow the game of golf around the globe.

The ABW can severely damage annual bluegrass and bentgrass golf turf in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, Midwest, states in the south, and recently in Wisconsin and Canada. ABWs attack bentgrass and annual bluegrass at all stages of life. Because the ABW adapts to its environments, researchers and golf course superintendents are constantly sharing best practices to prevent turfgrass damage. Multipronged control programs should be a focus and target overwintering adults and all stages of larvae. Consistent rotation of insecticide products will help limit chances of ABWs evolving to withstand singular products.

One of the leading ABW controls, Tetrino® insecticide is a diamide insecticide that features tetraniliprole as its active ingredient. Tetraniliprole is taken up quickly into the plant, providing knockdown within days of application. Because the insecticide’s efficacy is proven on all stages of ABW larvae, Tetrino can fit into any agronomic program. In addition to stopping ABW, Tetrino is effective on billbugs, white grubs, black turfgrass ataenius and caterpillars like fall armyworm that destroy turf throughout the Midwest and North Central United States.

Although not usually considered insects, nematodes are a serious issue that we want to highlight. Pathogenic nematodes: lance, ring, root-knot, sheath, spiral, stubby root and stunt, can cause tremendous damage to warm- and cool-season turfgrasses year round. Symptoms of nematodes may look similar to nutritional or environmental pressures like summer heat stress. Above ground, look for yellowing of the turf, followed by wilting, and eventual thinning. Below ground symptoms may show short turf roots nearby longer healthier roots; roots may have galls, crooks or a “hawk beak” appearance, and be brownish in color. Additional symptoms might include fungal issues like summer patch and Pythium root rot. Suspect a nematode issue if the turfgrass is unresponsive to fertilizer applications.

Management strategies show healthy turf with a strong root system can typically tolerate nematode feeding with minimal damage. Consider adding a true nematicide to an agronomic program to improve overall root health. Indemnify® nematicide is one option that is approved for use on greens, tees and fairways. It controls on-contact root-feeding nematodes, and can be used in a preventive or curative way to control infestations. Following periods of significant turfgrass stress, add a nematicide to ensure roots can take hold. In addition to applying a nematicide, cultural practices focus on the basics: raise the cut height, properly irrigate, minimize turf compaction by using a lightweight mower or roller, apply balanced fertility, and routinely aerify.

Our Green Solutions Team and area sales managers are ready to keep turfgrass pest-free and healthy.

Let us know if we can help!

Envu Golf Team

All things insect control

Controlling turfgrass insects requires alertness, relationships, adaptability, and staying current with industry trends and migration patterns. Reliable products help, too.

For the fourth straight year, Golf Course Industry has partnered with Envu to understand how superintendents develop programs and select solutions designed to thwart pests capable of hindering playing conditions.

The numbers in this “Turf Reports” section originate from a 20-question survey Golf Course Industry produced in collaboration with Signet Research, a New Jersey-based independent research firm. The survey was distributed from July 23 through Aug. 14 to an email list of subscribers holding director of agronomy, superintendent or assistant superintendent titles. Results are based on 141 returns at a confidence level of 95 percent.

The stories in this section originate from your peers.

Shoo fly

A pair of western New York superintendents share how the 2004 crane fly arrival still impacts insect control today.

At Transit Valley Country Club in suburban Buffalo, New York, superintendent Adam Mis has avoided major insect infestations. But he hasn’t always been so lucky.

Before arriving at Transit Valley, Mis spent 19 years as superintendent at nearby Brookfield Country Club. During his time there, in 2004, a non-native species of crane flies migrated to western New York. They are known to have traveled south from Ontario, with the first infestations found in Erie and Niagara counties. 

Crane fly can be damaging to turfgrass and crops, making golf courses a prime target for infestations. After they made their first appearances, Mis and his peers figured out how to treat the roughs and greens, so the flies would flee to surrounding neighborhoods. 

“When the golf course is protected, they go to the neighbors,” Mis says. “So, if you have a lot of homeowners that don’t have a service, they end up getting their yards eaten up with the crane fly.”

As with most infestation preventative programs, timing is key for treating crane flies. Mis has found that spraying for the crane fly right before the larvae comes out of the ground is the key time. Mis uses a treatment with a contact insecticide applied typically in November. While the crane fly remains a consistent problem in western New York, they can be controlled using the proper program. 

Along with treating for crane fly, Mis uses a preventative insecticide to control white grubs on short-turf areas. However, New York recently passed a law banning that insecticide on golf courses, so Mis plans to switch products next year.

For rising superintendents and assistants, or anyone involved in golf course maintenance, Mis recommends continuing education for insect management. Seminars are frequently available from local GCSAA chapters and turf schools, and gaining knowledge is important no matter what stage of the industry you’re at. 

“If you’re a young, aspiring turf student or assistant or superintendent, everything is online,” he says. “You can find the information. There’s so much continuing education.”

Transit Valley Country Club isn’t the only western New York course that has successfully thwarted potential major grub or ABW infestations. Superintendent Scott Dunbar has been with Diamond Hawk Golf Course since ground broke 19 years ago.

Through his time as superintendent, he hasn’t endured any major insect infestations. Ants and crane flies are his two biggest concerns.

Dunbar applies bifenthrin on the greens, fairways and tees from May through September. His program prevents ant infestation, as well as grubs. Ant mounds can cause damage to greens. If mounds form, Dunbar and his team will plug the areas and remove them.

Dunbar, like Mis, has learned how to handle crane flies. When the flies first made their way down to the area, Dunbar and his peers didn’t know what they were or how to treat them. Experience makes the infestations easier to handle. He now only treats for crane fly once per year, applying a November insecticide alongside his snow mold application.

Although Diamond Hawk deals with minimal insect problems, Dunbar realizes each property is different — something he recommends rising superintendents keep in mind when building control programs.

“Just breathe, talk to other guys,” he says. “Kind of give them the information, if you can, on how to deal with what certain ones you have and how to pre-treat for them. Get ahead of the populations. Each place is going to be different.”

— Kelsie Horner

Eevil weevils in Michigan

Superintendent Ryan Moore has worked at Forest Lake Country Club in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, since 2004. He was elevated from assistant superintendent to the top turf job in 2011. He went nearly two decades without enduring a serious annual bluegrass weevil infestation.

His pest situation changed in June 2023, when assistant superintendent Shannon Storey found some odd-looking turf. Moore conducted an extensive investigation in and around the spot. To his surprise, ABW had made its appearance. After finding the one patch, Moore discovered the pest in other places on the course. “There are just random spots,” he says, “and it’s mind blowing.”

Forest Lake’s insect control program didn’t target a potential ABW infestation. Forest Lake and its Midwest golf neighbors focus on more prevalent insects in the region such as white grubs. By the time the infestation was discovered, there could have been at least three generations of ABW present.

Moore and his team didn’t fully know how to eradicate the weevils, but they started by applying insecticides on the affected areas. Moore soon realized a blanket treatment was needed, and the crew applied bifenthrin and Tetrino. He also treats 65 acres for grubs.

The weevils returned — fortunately, in lesser numbers — in 2024. They were first noticed in mid-May. “This season, we kind of implemented a bigger, better strategy, less damage, but they’re still there,” Moore says. Moore adds it’s possible they have been there for three to four years but went undiscovered or misdiagnosed.

The emergence of ABW in the region surprised him. He had heard about its dangers from colleagues in other areas, but never suspected their presence on the course. A fellow Detroit superintendent, Country Club of Detroit’s Ross Miller, forewarned Moore of the weevils. “I remember talking with Ross probably four or five years ago, and I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? I know you're afraid of this thing, but whatever,’” Moore says. “And then it started to dawn on me like, we’re a 100-year-old golf course. We have annual bluegrass fairways, we have a bentgrass mix, then the annual bluegrass roughs.”

Moore, a past Michigan GCSA president, leans on other superintendents in the area to help him handle potential issues such as ABW. “They have different experiences, different vendors, so they make awareness,” he says.

Uncontrollable ABW creates uneasiness for a superintendent. “You start to stop sleeping at night,” Moore says. There was progress from 2023 to 2024 — and Moore hopes the weevils will depart by 2025.

— Kelsie Horner

Move along, mole crickets

When he was a student, Richard Brown was a Fighting Mole Cricket at South Carolina’s Horry-Georgetown Technical College. Now, in his second year as the superintendent at Florence Country Club, he’s fighting mole crickets. As Brown is learning more about the course every day, which is just 55 miles from where he attended college, he has come to rely on consistent programs to thwart disease and insects.

During his first year on the job, Brown found that mole crickets had taken over collars and parts of greens on the Donald Ross-inspired course. Mole crickets become more difficult to kill with age, and when Brown had found them in the fall, the majority were full-sized.

In the 2023 season, he had not used a preventive program to avoid the infestation, but he pursued a different route in 2024. “The second year has just been trying to implement what I've learned from the first year,” Brown says.

Brown began using a preventive treatment of a systemic insecticide, with his first application in April. He applied the solution in spots on the course where conditions were ideal for mole crickets to infest. Following the treatment in April, two applications of bifenthrin and imidacloprid are used in the summer months.

For Brown, timing the applications has proved to be the most challenging part of controlling the insects. “Make sure to get them early enough before they get too big and difficult to control, because once they get later in their life cycle, they’re a lot bigger and harder to kill,” he says.

Mole cricket infestation will build piles of dirt, so for Brown, a successful program looks like not seeing any mounds formed on the course. “That’s kind of your telltale sign that you have them, and I haven’t seen any signs of them yet this year since I’ve been on that preventive program.”

Another telltale sign of success? Dead mole crickets. “One of my favorite things about mole crickets is, if say you have an area that you know there’s mole cricket, you pressure spray over it, and the next day you come back, and you can see them either dead or they’ll be shaking or trying to crawl away,” Brown says. “And maybe that sounds kind of morbid, but it’s good to see that insecticides do still work.”

Brown uses a comprehensive program for disease control on the course but elected not to start his time as superintendent using a program for mole crickets, which he says he later regretted.

“I think with my disease program, since I’m on such a comprehensive program, knock on wood, I haven’t had any major outbreaks since I’ve been superintendent here,” Brown says. “And that’s the way I like to keep it, versus with the way I managed mole crickets the first year, which was I thought I’d just kind of wait and see, and I didn’t see anything. I didn’t see any of them, so I didn’t treat for them. And then that came back to bite me in the fall when they were growing up.”

Brown is continuing to learn from past mistakes and experiences to be the best superintendent he can be. “My first year was all just kind of a blur,” he says. “It was pretty much just surviving and trying to figure out how the golf course reacts, what it’s going to do, dry spots and where the heavy weed pressure is, the biggest challenges disease-wise, biggest challenges insecticide-wise. So that’s probably the biggest thing, is just still being the new guy, in a sense, adding on to what I’ve learned from the time has probably been the biggest challenge, and just figuring things out.”

— Kelsie Horner

Transition Zone tracking

When Greg Caldwell started his role as superintendent at Pete Dye River Course of Virginia Tech in 2020, he was unaware of any annual bluegrass weevil infestations. Once he found some of his collars going sideways in the Virginia summer heat, he soon realized the weevils were alive and present.  

With Transition Zone weather acting like “Jekyll and Hyde,” as Caldwell says, using proper control programs and treatments is important. Along with ABW, June beetles made their presence known in the mid-July weather.  

“This year was really bad for those around here for whatever reason. You could see them flying everywhere,” he says. “You would ride in your cart down the fairway and get hit in the face.” 

Caldwell, the Virginia Turfgrass Association president, has found a preventive treatment program to be most effective in his battle against ABW. When spring rolls in, Caldwell starts his program with an adulticide application. From there, he monitors for insects and treats any areas that show signs of infestation with a bifenthrin solution.  

Following the adulticide application, Caldwell uses two applications of Tetrino. The insecticide is used on all the greens and collars. It is also applied to fairways and tees, as well as half-rate in the roughs. Tetrino also helps prevent white grub infestations. “Thank goodness for Tetrino,” Caldwell says. “That really changed the control strategy around here.” His program continues with insecticide applications in July and then August. 

Caldwell uses many resources to stay current on insecticides and infestation trends. He and his team frequently study ABW migrations and progressions. He also speaks with representatives of major plant protectant companies to get advice. “They can keep you up to speed on what’s coming down the pipeline and what other guys are seeing,” he says. “It’s always good to communicate as much as you can with the guys that are out and about, seeing everybody else.”

Caldwell gives some of the credit for his program’s success to his fellow superintendent peers. “I’ll come up with a program, but then I also run it by my core group of superintendents because this is my fourth full year of being a superintendent here,” Caldwell says. “I’m still figuring things out a little bit, and it’s always good to run it by your peers, the guys that you trust.”

— Kelsie Horner