A Study on the Effect of Ecological Factors on the Swarming of White Wax Scales

No report about the effect of ecological factors on the swarming of white wax scales has been seen both at home and abroad yet. The swarming of white wax scales, which concerns the production of white wax directly, is conditioned by some ecological factors. With this question in mind, we made observations and experiments on it from 1980 to 1981 in Jingdong County, Yunnan Province. Under normal conditions, the swarming occurs at 8:00 to 11:00 in the morning, seldom in the afternoon, and never in the evening or at night. The starting temperature, humidity and illumination are respectively 12℃, 80% and 100 lx; the optimum 18~25℃, 25%~45%, 12500-16000 lx; and the ending 30℃, 22% and 20 000 lx. Our results indicate that the swarming of the white wax scales are greatly affected by the ecological factors such as temperature, illumination, rainfall, humidity, wind and congestus, key factors among which are temperature, rainfall and illumination.