How To Get Mealybugs GONE 🌱 Mealy Bug Infestation SOLVED! 🪳

Hello everyone, welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, hi my name's Claire and this is Yolie. I make videos all about houseplant care, sharing tips and tricks I've learnt over the years to help keep your plants happy and healthy and in today's video I'm going to be taking you through how to treat and get rid of mealybugs. I've got a fairly big infestation at the moment, it's gotten really really bad and they can be quite tricky to get rid of if you don't know how to go about it. So yes, I hope you find this useful and I hope you enjoy it. Let's get into it. So I first discovered mealybugs about three and a half weeks ago on my Hoya Crimson Queen. For some reason Hoyas are really really susceptible to them. They can affect all house plants but Hoyas just are a little bit of a magnet for them and I managed to treat that plant and that plant is now absolutely fine. However, the plant that it was next to and I think this is the infestation started was my Hoya crincolate and for the sake of this video I decided not to treat this plant. I just put this plant inside a clear plastic bag so it's been kind of isolated in its own zone away from my other plants but I've just let the mealybugs do their thing for the past three and a half weeks and now I will put some clips in because I don't know how well you're going to be able to see on camera but it is not good. The whole plant is looking very unhealthy and it is literally riddled with mealybugs and this is a plant that I think is going to be quite difficult to treat because because it's a crincolate it's got those really kind of crinkly leaves they've almost oh god I can see loads of them in there oh can you see that uh it makes my skin crawl um but because it's got those really crinkly leaves they get right inside they get into kind of all the nooks and crannies and they can be really really difficult to get rid of. So obviously this is a like quite an extreme infestation but if you just find one or two on a plant it can just be that I mean in the past I've only ever suffered with one or two I've never had an infestation this big before but I usually just kind of squash them you can wear gloves it's really disgusting or you can use alcohol rubbing alcohol this is the stuff that I get and I'm going to be using that on this plant today I will link it down in the description box below and that essentially just kills the mealybugs instantly and sometimes if it's not that bad if there is just one or two that can be enough to just stop them in their tracks right there but if you do start to notice more than more than just a few then I would say go in with the treatment that I'm going to do today because once they start spreading they can be a nightmare to get rid of they literally suck the sap from your plants and they can bring your plants down fairly quickly if they get to this stage and as you can see this plant is currently far from healthy I do have faith that it's going to bounce back I'm going to try and get it back to the start of a healthy state today in this video but mealybugs I mean for such a long time because I've never kind of really really struggled with them I didn't know where they came from how they got in and mealybugs can come in just if you leave windows open they can come in through your windows they can get attached to your clothes when you're outside and you can bring them in that way they can come in with your soil they can come in with your sphagnum moss and sometimes it's not the actual big mealybugs that you're going to see coming in it's going to be just kind of eggs or larvae and this is why people recommend that you isolate a plant for as long as possible at least a few weeks when you first get it because sometimes there's things lurking that you just can't see and I'm guilty of this I nowadays because I've got so many plants I am guilty of just giving them a check over and kind of putting them in with the rest of my collection that's a risk that I just kind of have to take sometimes because I don't have a huge I live in a one bedroom flat I don't have loads of space to isolate but let's get going with this one so I'm going to pop the camera down a little bit so that you can see what I'm doing oh that's not a great angle I will have to talk to you like this and but what I'm going to start by doing with this plant is I'm going to just decant some of the rubbing alcohol into a little a little pot and I'm going to go over any mealybugs that I can see it's obviously going to take quite a long time I'll speed this up so that you don't have to sit through the whole thing but I'm just going to go through every single stem leaf every bit of this plant and just get as many as I can see with the naked eye and then we will move on to the next step but yeah it's really important to get into all the little nooks and crannies because they are very very good at hiding and as I say there could be eggs or something like that that you're not seeing and ideally I don't like using chemicals or alcohol or anything like that on my plants I've made quite a few videos recently about the use of biological pest control things like predatory mites and stuff like that which I do use for other pests such as spider mites and thrips but when it comes to mealybugs there doesn't seem to be anything that you can use in a home environment that's actually that effective I know some people do release ladybirds and stuff like that but that's personally just something that I don't want to do in my own home I think if we were in the middle of summer right now and the weather was a little bit warmer a natural option that I would consider would be to kind of create a little greenhouse space on my balcony release some ladybugs in there and let them do the job but at this time of year that's just not doable and with the level that this has got to now if I want this plant if I want to ensure that this plant doesn't die this feels like the best way to go about it so yeah I'm just coating all of them that I can see oh there's a lot of them and as I say although mealybugs are very well known for affecting plants like hoyas that kind of have a more robust structure to them it absolutely is not limited to hoyas I found I found a mealybug on my bird of paradise before and that is obviously such a foliagey plant so I don't think you can ever really rule it out I've never seen an infestation I don't think on a really foliagey plant but again if you didn't deal with it right away then it could absolutely get to that level and the thing that I always I think maybe this is how this got missed to be honest at first is a lot of the time you see things like perlite in the soil and you you don't think anything of it and a lot of the time perlite can be a mealybug obviously they're both white they can be easily missed and mealybugs also aren't always huge like even just looking here on this plant some of them are absolutely tiny they almost just look like little aerial roots on the stem of the plant so you do just have to be really really vigilant with your checking and sometimes doing a treatment like what I'm doing now is is going to be enough and you won't have to treat your plants again as I say the one that I treated the other with this was next to the one that I treated about three weeks ago even now I haven't put it back in with the rest of my collection it's sealed inside a plastic bag still so that if there are any more issues further down the line of eggs hatch or anything like that then I can deal with them but at the moment I haven't seen I haven't seen anything else but as I say the infestation on that one I mean it was literally I think there were about just a few little a few little clusters here and there they honestly oh mealybugs are so gross um but it was nowhere near as bad as this one's got and in fact on this one even the areas that I can't see mealybugs in I'm still like the bits where the petiole of the leaf meets the stem just there I'm still going in with my brush and just getting right in there because I don't trust that there's not little ones lurking because there are thousands on this in fact this is why it's really important to check carefully because if you look at that leaf there they're so small you might not be able to see but there are actually loads of little juvenile baby ones there that haven't kind of formed that fluffiness around them yet and obviously if you don't get all of them as well they're going to turn into big huge ones and you're going to have to start all over again so yeah being really on it with your treatment and literally getting into every single area is very important and as I'm starting to get into the middle here oh there's just so many in there yeah they often kind of start at the base of the plant and make their way out so if you are checking a plant for mealybugs don't just don't just start at the outside and think oh it's fine I don't have to check the rest of the plant I would start at the inside and kind of work your way out because oh it's just completely white and fluffy in here it's really revolting and there are a few leaves here and there on this plant that I can see are not bouncing back like you can see that one's yellowing and if you look at the back of the leaf you can see why so there's no point in trying to save that growth I'm just going to chop it back any growth that I've chopped back as well will just be directed into new growth in other areas of the plant so actually giving it a little bit of a prune back isn't a bad idea if you want the plant to bounce back and be lovely and healthy again which I do I love this plant just be careful when you're doing this not to overload your brush with alcohol so that it drips hence why I'm using a very small brush that doesn't actually hold that much moisture because what you don't want to happen is pure alcohol dripping into the soil of the plant and getting into the root system I am actually going to be changing out the soil in this plant as well but alcohol on the roots can actually kill the plant so make sure you're just sticking to foliage and vines alone I sped this section of video up as it took a very long time but I just wanted to stress again how important it is to be thorough with this otherwise you'll likely have to do it all over again in the near future okay that is the full plant treated you can't now see any mealybugs on it it immediately looks a lot better but the thing with me bugs is that they can get down into the soil and they can actually feed on the roots of your plant as well which is disgusting that tends to only happen with very big infestations but obviously this was fairly severe and I would say in fact even if your infestation isn't that bad I would still recommend changing out the soil just because again eggs larvae stuff like that so I'm gonna get rid of the soil it's in the soil is currently very very dry because it hasn't had a water since I put it in the bag a few weeks ago so I'm hoping that's gonna mean it's fairly easy to get off I've actually got a couple of sections of the plant here that I'm gonna chop to propagate I think I should be able to plant them straight back into the soil with the rest of the plant when I put it back up because Hoya does propagate really well in the soil but I'm gonna do that just because there's sections that I've lost quite a lot of foliage on it's looking quite leggy and if I'd like to get the plant looking lovely and full again I think that's probably the best option so yeah I'm just gonna put those nice cuttings to one side and we'll deal with them afterwards but I've got a box just below me where I'm gonna empty the soil it goes without saying that I'm not going to be reusing the soil I don't tend to reuse soil anyway but I know I know some people do if you have dealt with pests then do not reuse the soil because it's just going to spread I'm going to empty that out and try and get as much of the soil off the roots as I possibly can so for the size of this plant it actually has really quite a small root system so I'm not going to take any more soil off just because I don't want to risk damaging the roots that are there I can't see any sign of any bugs whatsoever but what I am going to do is I'm just going to take this section of the plant through to the bathroom along with the two little sections that I'm going to propagate and I'm going to get it in the shower and I'm going to give it a really good blitz I put the shower head on a strong setting and really tried to get into all the nooks and crannies of the plant so that any areas I might have accidentally missed were cleaned off you can use horticultural soap along with this too however if you've already done an alcohol treatment it's not absolutely necessary now before I even think about bringing the plant back through and potting up or doing anything to it I'm just going to have a really really thorough cleanup and clean of the area that I've been working in I'm going to get rid of all the sections that I decided to chop with mealy bugs on them I'm not going to compost these usually I would say obviously leaves save the environment throw them in the compost but with mealy bugs unless you want them to spread it's just not a good idea so I am just going to be putting these in the bin I'm going to give my potting mat a sterilize and a wipe down and I'm going to give a thorough wipe down to the table as well and then we will move on to getting the plant back to health so it kind of goes without saying but I'm not going to be using the same pot as before I usually would just sterilize the pot probably bleach it to be on the safe side and then reuse it for another plant but with this one as you can see this one's one that I decorated myself it's covered in material I covered it in macrame cord so there could be things lurking in in the material itself which is really really gross so what I'm going to do is just give that pot a thorough scrub and clean before I use it on any other plant again so I'm going to go in with a new pot and actually looking at the size of this root system it's fairly small so I'm actually going down a pot size but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing and then with my cuttings that I took here it goes without saying as well but I've cleaned my scissors everything everything has been cleaned so there's no risk of spread but you can see the bottom of the stems looking a little bit dead and I think that's just where the mealybugs have got it and kind of sucked all the sap out of it so I'm just gonna cut it a little bit higher up and remove that lower leaf so that when I plant it there's not as much risk of rotting and I'm just going to remove the bottom couple of leaves on this section as well and yeah once the main section's potted I'm just gonna literally poke these sections down into the soil and Hoya is usually very quick to so hopefully in the next week or two they will take and they'll start to grow and the plant will be looking lovely and full again perfect and the final thing I'm gonna do I'm gonna try and keep keep this fairly natural I know you can go in with pesticides and stuff like that but I've already used alcohol on the plant and I don't want to use anything else I'm just going to give it a spray with water and neem oil I just mixed two drops of neem oil in with my little spray bottle here and that tends to be very good at preventing mealybugs so in theory I don't think because I was very very thorough with this treatment I don't think I should have to do another treatment on this plant but I will obviously just be very closely monitoring it over the next few weeks and I am still going to keep it isolated and as far away as possible from the rest of my plants but yeah I think I have all the faith with this plant now I think it immediately looks healthier I'm going to give it a good water now as soon as I finish filming this and I think the plant should be much perkier much healthier and much happier so yes that is how I go about treating mealybugs and I really hope that you found this video useful if you've got any questions then please do drop them in the comments down below I'll do my best help and cover them in a video at some point soon but if you did enjoy this video please make sure to give it a thumbs up subscribe to my channel have a lovely day and I will see you in the next video