Dendrobium beetle eating candy

[SouthPark]

Beetles have to eat something obviously. This morning, I noticed at first glance a cute 'spider' on the petal of my C. Caudabec Candy. But after a few more seconds - it was clear that this wasn't a spider.

It's still a cute beetle - just doing its thing (eating). I've actually never used carbaryl solution on flowers before, as I've never (exception coming up) had dendrobium beetle eating any of my orchid flowers ----- until recently, when my fairly new cyms had their flowers open for quite a long time (long lasting), and something was tucking into the cym flowers after a while.

The water drops on the flowers are only due to the carbaryl mix that I sprayed onto the flowers. I think these substances will/can leave residue or white marks/patches on some flowers - maybe darker coloured flowers.

Anyway, these sorts of beetles are apparently common in our state of Queensland. I'll just monitor the situation.

Another thing that I haven't tried before is to just very lightly coat flowers with gentle puffs of pyrethrum spray --- or put a timed sprayer puffer near the flowers - and do a single puff every "X" number of hours. These puffers only cover a fairly small area. There is the outdoors version puffers. But I won't resort to this just yet - to avoid collateral damage (other insects). The Dendrobium beetle is just doing its thing too - surviving like the rest of us. So ------ nothing personal as such!

[SouthPark]

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[Leafmite]

I am not a fan of pesticides but when we had fruit trees, we had to spray every two weeks for various insects and we learned quickly that if we did not, bye-bye fruit. Sometimes, pesticides are the only choice.