I would spray one or more of my three favorite liquid organic protein sources. These include in order, milk, seaweed, and garlic juice. Milk is the easiest to find, seaweed is usually easy to find, and garlic juice usually has to be made. You make garlic juice by putting a pound of garlic in 32 ounces of water into a blender. Grind it to pulp and strain off the pulp for a neighborhood Italian dinner. Spray the juice on the plant. Dilute milk and seaweed at 2-3 ounces per gallon of water and spray. These materials work by feeding the microbes that live on the outside of the plant. These well fed microbes both protect the plant by themselves, but they also seem to stimulate the natural defense mechanisms of the plants to protect themselves. You also might sprinkle a handful of your favorite organic fertilizer under each plant. If you don't have anything very handy, you can use dog or cat food. Wet it so that the chunks melt into the soil.

Dormant oils sprayed at the wrong time, 100 degree temperatures would be, can be harmful to the plants. dormant oils are meant to be sprayed when plants are dormant. The summer oils are less likely to cause problems but still need to be sprayed only when temperatures are below 80 degrees, at least evey label I have seen states that. Alcohol sprays tend to do more harm to plants then most anything else unless so diluted as to be ineffective. The usual mix I have seen is about 1 part rubbing alcohol to 9 parts water which is much too weak to harm much of anything. Some people do report good results dipping a cotton swab in 70 percent rubbing alcohol and then dabbing that on each of those wee scales.

The eggs of the CCS are inside the white fluffy stuff on the adult female scale. They are red. When the eggs hatch inside that white fluff, the nymphs (babies) leave for green pastures and once they locate a feeding site, begin adding their waxy layers. Each of those cottony egg sacs carry somewhere around 600 eggs...and most all of them (if not all) will become female scale capable of generating their own batch of eggs. Thus, you are not cleaning eggs from your citrus, but hatchlings (nymphs). Females do not lay the eggs and leave them, but carry them all within the cottony sac until they leave of their own accord. You might find it easier to use a soft rag, dampened with alcohol, to wipe the scale adults AND nymphs from your plant. Easier than toothpicks, yes? At that point, even soapy water will do the job rather than the alcohol. But, if you don't apply a horticultural oil after all of this, you'll be missing an important step in preventing a recurrence. The oil will not only smother the nymphs and adults of this scale (including all of those you will miss in your hand removal) but do the same to other scale species, spider mites, aphids, etc. Horticultural oils (which are organic approved) are a very useful tool in the control of plant pests...and help us keep pest populations under control so that we don't ourselves into trouble. Here is a link that might be useful: CCS eggs

I had about 30 of them on the 6' tall Eueka lemon tree. after I posted and found out they were suckers I p[ut on a pair of work gloves and went on a squish fest. I checked the entire tree twice since then and have not seen any more on the lemon or the orange tree close to it. They definately were not on the tree that morning. I had inspected it pretty well since it has a lot of sudden new growth after fertilizing it. They are such a contrast in color to the small tree I know I would have seen them if they were on the tree earlier. I also searched here once I knew the name of the bug and found out more about it. Thanks to this site I find a lot of things out I would not have known otherwise. Also thank you for your suggestions. Chris