Buff thrips are so tiny you can hardly see them. They do eat the blooms on light colored roses. I had a bad case of them earlier but not many now. I have some small black weavil like bugs that are considerably larger than thrips. They are shiny black and thin about 1/4 inch long. They get into the blooms but they don't do any damage. Baldo said that they were probably just feasting on the nectar. How about love bugs, had many this year? We have had a few but not nearly as bad as years past. Maybe the late cold and endless drought helped. Hamp

Great! I just ran across this and see that it is an old post, any new developments with your aviary? Funny because I keep some host plants in the pool cage to protect cats from wasps, etc, and often have butterflies trying to get in!! Of course I have plenty of larval plants outside the screen too so they can find a spot for their eggs. Anyway, nice pics!

Sassy, In a very narrow view, yes, spraying pesticides will kill off the bad insects and could have prevented the damage. When you think of things on a more broad world view, a lot of the pesticides available are broad spectrum and tend to kill off a lot more insects than just the bad ones. I was in my garden the other day looking over my plants and watching the different array of insects. I did notice an occasional aphid here and there and actually had a brief thought of maybe spraying them off. Then I noticed some bees and wasps, here and there, and an a coupld odd looking flies. The flies were flying from flower to flower gathering some nectar. I saw one land on one of the leaves and lay an egg. I was initially creepd out and went to investigate online to see what I could find. What I found was really neat, at least I think so, I found that my weird looking flies were called "Hoverflies". Not only are they pollinating my tomato flowers, but their offspring are keeping the aphids and leafhoppers under control (that's why I only found a sparse one here and there). My point is, it's easy to say "spray pesticide and all will be fine", but if you look into things a little more you'll find that there might be better ways that let nature sort it out. Had I sprayed a pesticide, I can only imagine it would have killed the hoverflies and possibly even the bees and other pollinators in my garden. With the worms, however, you may just need to help nature along by plucking them off, heh. Here is a link that might be useful: Link about Hoverflies

Thank you. I will look into this "nectaries" thing. Very cool! Thanks again, Julie