Aphids?

Are these aphids? I took this photo this evening. They're swarming on my butterfly weed! Yuck!!!

Yep, looks like them to me! I think those are one of their favorite plants, along with Crape Myrtles and Hibiscus. I gave up growing Asclepias because I was having to hose it off every single night to get rid of the aphids. My aphids were green though, I like the green ones better than the black ones. Although I hate them both!

I believe tomorrow I'm going to break out the bug killer and get rid of these creeps. I rarely (a few times a year?) use chemicals, but this calls for it...LOL

Insecticidal soap will kill them just fine, no need to bring out the big guns.

even dishwashing liquid will work. i had the green ones on mine too.

"even dishwashing liquid will work"

Yeah, I was wondering about that.

1 Tablespoon per gallon of water. a Tablespoon of alcohol in a pint sprayer will also work.

Any harm to the plant if I increase the amount of dish washing liquid? I might want to really hit 'em hard since there are so many and maybe I'm just a little bit mean and want to see them go quickly...LOL I just want it to work.

I wouldn't use more than is recommended, they're soft bodied insects and are very easy to kill--the problem with them is there are lots of them and they reproduce very quickly, that's why they get to be such a problem sometimes. And no matter what treatment you use, you'll probably have to repeat it a couple times over the next few days to get rid of them.

ok

if you're serious about growing plants that aphids love, consider a product like GreenCure. it's potassium bicarbonate and although it's a natural fungicide, it has the added benefit of smothering aphids. i starting using it this year for my roses and couldn't believe that i had no aphids. i went back on their website and, sure enough, there is a little blurb about killing aphids. yay!

I think the black aphids on your plant are actually parasitized aphids. A tiny parasitic wasp is pupating inside and will emerge as an adult to mate, and then lay eggs in around another 100 aphids.

That is one great photo, BTW!!! Do we have good photos of aphids here on DG Bug Files?

ecrane3- Every night you need to spray the Asclepias? Outside? Yikes! And here I thought I was going to create a Monarch-only smorgasbord. :(

I would hose them off from time to time, once you get them on a plant like that which they really love, it's very difficult to completely get rid of them. But the good news is the aphids don't seem to spread from it to other plants (unless you have other aphid magnets around of course!) So you just hose it off often enough that the aphids don't suck the life out of the plant.