 This is the Sugar Beet Report, bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the Sugar Beet growing season. Now that producers have been getting into the field, what early season insects are also ready to go? Mark Bautel, NDSU Extension Entomologist, has the latest early season insect information. Mark, now that beets are getting planted, what are some things we should be watching for on insects? Seedling emergence is one of the things we'd want to be watching, plant development, watch that closely because some of the early season insect pests can cause problems with that and cause seedlings to die. Some of those pests include wireworms, cutworms, and springtails, so those are the ones we should be watching for. I have heard a few reports of cutworm problems in the Mindak area where I've gotten most of the calls on, so that's something to watch for. Another thing is we've got a lot of late planted beets this year, so we have to be watching for, you know, the plants are going to be more vulnerable to those pests as well as the Sugar Beet root maggot. What are the best control options for these pests? Yeah, with wireworms and springtails, right now we don't have tried and true rescue options, so the best option at this point is replanting those beets. You can go into those bad spotty areas and just replant those areas only. Cutworms, the key to them is catching them early, and full year insecticides do a pretty good job on them, and we'd probably want to be using a pyrethroid insecticide. Mark, we have to talk about root maggot. Root maggot numbers have been high in the past few years. Can we expect similar problems this year? The last several years, actually we've had about four or five years in a row where we've broken the last year's record, and 2022 was no exception. We had the highest root maggot populations valley wide that we've had in the last 16 years. We still have quite a problem on our hands. The worst areas last year anyway were in the central and northern valleys, as they commonly can be, but we also had quite a eruption of activity in the Baker Saban, Minnesota area, so those areas are going to need to be watched as well. We have a high potential for damaging infestations because of those populations last year, so we're going to be monitoring activity again this year in a collaboration with American Crystal on fly counts, fly activity throughout the valley, and those will be posted as they've always been three days per week every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the growers and for ag managers as well, advisors to be watching, so that will be on the NDSU website, and it's very easy to find online and just search for NDSU sugar beet root maggot or even root maggot fly counts, and you should be able to find them. I know it's early, Mark, but can you give us a rough idea when peak fly might occur? Thanks for giving me that latitude. We're ranging from around 330 growing degree days, that is root maggot growing degree days in the southern valley, and then we're averaging about 290 in the northern reaches of the valley, so with peak fly occurring at 650, yes, we've got a lot of time, but we've also got a fairly warm forecast in the next seven to 10 days, so things could change and pop quickly. As far as a peak forecast, again, this is long range, so what we're looking at right now is in the southern valley somewhere between the 10th and 14th of June, the central valley as we moved northward a couple of days later between the 12th and 16th of June, and then the northern valley could happen as early as June 13th and could range up to the 17th. Again, that warm weather could even accelerate things more than we anticipate, so don't count on these. We don't want people to rest on these early forecast numbers. Thanks, Mark. Our guest has been Mark Bautel, NDSU Extension Entomologist. This is the SugarBeat Report, bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the SugarBeat growing season.