Three weeks ago I found a newly hatched cluster of lace bug in our olive trees. I've been randomly checking for weeks.

I'm good at spotting established colonies, but have to work harder at finding the new ones. They are individually tiny, and initially there is no obvious leaf damage that you can see from metres away. So its a matter of finding a footprint of a cluster of insects about the size of a 20c piece, in a tree anywhere on the olive grove.

My theory, not backed up by anyone else, is that lace bug prefer the lowest branch and the most extended, so if they are going to be anywhere that's where they'll be. I always look at that branch, as well as randomly inspect others. Once they get going, of course, its more like a bushfire, and they flare up the canopy spreading upwards like flames.

So these hatched out about 4 weeks after we had two late, severe frosts. Temperature of -3 overnight, frost for more than a few hours.

The more I looked the more I found. More than one group, in more than one tree, in more than one paddock. Not good.

The lace bug I have found are all first "instar"...first stage of five moults to adulthood. That is a good thing, as it means we had a little bit of time to play with.

So last week we sprayed. Again we tackled our trees with an adapted grape blast sprayer, with all the blast nozzles pointing upwards into the tree.

It was a lot of work getting ready. I still had prunings on the ground that needed to be either removed or mulched where they were. There were some leftovers out there from when I limed the grove.....pallets on the ground with bags of empty lime bags.

Spraying needs water, and I had set up three IBCs and plumbed them together so we could rapidly fill the 1500 litre spray tank. That took me three days. But it turns out we needed more than 1500 litres. The advice I received...an improvement on what we did last year...was that we should spray a larger volume of liquid. In the end I scrapped the IBC project and we set up a firefighter pump from the river. That pumps a high volume in demand, so we filled the spray tank quickly that way and turned around the refill process quite quickly.

Cattle had to be moved out of the spray area, and sheep moved to accommodate the cattle moving. Water had to be setup for the cattles' temporary accommodation.

Anyway, it was a lot of things to be done in a short timeframe, all of them essential.

All went well on the day, no problems.

The next day I went out and checked for results. I found nothing but dead lace bug. Except....the very first tree as you come into out place is right on a fence. One vertical sliver of the canopy had live lace bug. Looking at the tree, I could see it had been sprayed...I included white oil in the mix, so there is a slight glossiness to the leaves that have been covered.

What it was, was that because of the fence, the big rig that is a tractor and long spray unit couldn't get at the right angle to get the entire tree. From two different directions most of the tree was covered, but a sliver was missed.

So, the next day I went out suited up and drove out to manually spray this one tree. No live lace bug to be found.

Seeing as I was suited up and chemicals mixed though, I went back to the house and then manually sprayed the 8 or so trees that are close to the shed, in the chook yard, next to an abandoned hay rake...all the ones that might not have had the full treatment.

This year I have a new trick. Some of the trees are 6-7 metres high with a massive canopy. My spray unit has a special extended wand, more than two metres, but even so, it can't effectively spray a big tree. But.... if you tape the spray head to the mouth of a leaf blower, you create a monster that can spray directionally up to 12 metres. Awesome!

You need a suit though, you wouldn't want to be standing near that monstrosity in action unprotected. I include some marker dye in any spraying I do, and the evidence is that even if you think you are working cleanly and not getting any exposure to the chemicals, by the end of the day the plastic suit is well decorated.

So, a week later and I am still looking out for live lace bug. Nothing so far.

Realistically I should expect to have to do this again within 2-3 weeks, to capture anything that hatched after spraying. (Like frosts, spraying doesn't affect lace bug before they hatch.)

But I certainly feel like we have made a better start to the process.

Postscript: 16th November, still no new Lace Bug found.