How to Treat Mealy Bugs in Plants
Mealybugs are one of the most frustrating houseplant pests, but a combo of Dawn dish soap and rubbing alcohol (70%), can be a very effective, low-cost treatment when used carefully.
What Mealy Bugs Are And Why They’re Tough
Mealybugs are soft-bodied insects covered in a white, cottony wax that protects them from many sprays. They suck sap from leaves and stems, causing yellowing, distortion, sticky honeydew, and sometimes sooty mold. They hide in leaf joints, under leaves, and even in roots, so one treatment is never enough.
How to Treat Mealy Bugs
Step 1: Isolate and inspect your plants
Move the infested plant away from your other plants immediately.
Check every crevice: leaf joints, undersides of leaves, along stems, and around the rim and bottom of the pot.
If several plants share a shelf or tray, inspect them all—mealybugs spread easily.
Step 2:
Make a gentle Dawn dish soap spray
Soap works by breaking down the insect’s outer membrane and suffocating soft-bodied pests. It must touch the insect to work. This is the quickest way to remove a large portion of the pest in one step, making your follow-up visits to your plant a little less time-consuming.
Create a dish soap mixture as if you were washing dishes in a container that is large enough to fit your Plant, Pot, and soil (The whole enchilada in). Please immerse the plant completely in water and wait until the air bubbles coming out of the soil stop. This is the soapy mixture getting down into the soil where larvae and eggs are waiting.
Once that is down do not rinse it off but put it in a shadey location to continue to battle the pests and to start to dry. Wait 3-5 days and check your plant over again.
Step 3:
Spot-treat with rubbing alcohol
Rubbing alcohol (isopropyl, ideally 70% or less) helps dissolve the mealybugs’ waxy coating and kills them on contact.
Grab:
- 70% isopropyl alcohol
- cotton swabs or paper towel
Then:
- Dip the swab in alcohol
- Touch every white cluster directly
- They will instantly dissolve and die
Alcohol melts their protective coating.
Repeat this spot treatment every few days as you see new bugs appear. Mealy bugs can jump from one plant to another, so keep other plants far away from them. Once you go 2 weeks after the last sighting and treatment of the bugs, you are safe to move the plant back into its usual place in your urban jungle.
Fleurish Pro Tip-
Make sure you wipe down the area in which the plant was sitting eggs and larvae can still be living there, so make sure you clean that area up too!