How to Identify and Control Squash Bugs

The squash bug is a pernicious insect, one of the most common and serious pests of cucurbit plants like squash and pumpkins, as well as cucumbers and melons, though typically to a lesser degree.

Unfortunately, these bugs are widespread throughout the US and southern Canada.

These insects can suck out a plant’s juices so aggressively that the plant will wilt and die, injecting toxic substances that only exacerbate the problem.

And if you didn’t think things could get any worse, squash bugs can infect your crops with cucurbit yellow vine disease (CYVD) as well.

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These insects are a particular problem with young plants, and those that are flowering.

The symptoms of a squash bug infestation are sometimes mistaken for bacterial wilt.

When these pests feed, they cause yellow spots on the leaves that eventually turn brown. In severe infestations, the leaves can turn black and dry out.

The damaged plants typically show signs of poor health as water stops flowing through them, but this is also due to the fact that toxic substances are injected into the leaves when the pests feed, causing what is sometimes referred to as anasa wilt.

Squash bugs will also feed on pumpkin fruit and hard winter squashes, though melons and cucumbers are rarely affected.

If this is the case, they produce two types of symptoms: dead, sunken areas that are readily colonized by the microbes that cause postharvest rots, and corky spots on the surface.

Female Anasa tristisadults typically appear in gardens in early June and lay their eggs through midsummer. In contrast