What are Olive Bud Mites?
What are olive bud mites? They’re little creatures that measure about 0.1-0.2 millimeters long – too small to see with the naked eye. Under a microscope, you can see that they’re yellow, teardrop shaped, and four legged. They live and feed exclusively on olive trees. Since you can’t see them, the best way to tell if you have olive bud mites is to look for the damage caused by them. This can appear in the form of prematurely dropped flowers or buds, discolored buds, stunted growth, or spotty leaves that curl under. In very young olive trees, a bad infestation can seriously stunt the plant’s growth.
Olive Bud Mite Treatment
So how do you go about controlling olive tree mites? In most cases, you don’t. Even a large infestation isn’t likely to hurt the tree or affect olive harvest too much. The only reason to take action is if your harvest has been below average for several years running. If this is the case, you can apply powdered or wettable sulfur. (Don’t apply the wettable variety on days hotter than 90 F./32 C.). You can also try non-chemical approaches, such as introducing ladybugs, a natural predator. If you live in Australia, there are some predatory mites that feed on them but, unfortunately, they’re not native anywhere else in the world.
