While it may seem like grasshoppers are trying to take over, the rains are actually helping control the numbers this summer. This according to James Tansey, PhD, the Provincial Entomologist with the Ministry of Agriculture.

Tansey said while there are 85 species of grasshoppers in Saskatchewan, only about four or five of those are ever problematic.

"What's important to growers in the agriculture industry is a relative minority of those animals," Tansey explained. "We can have occasional problems with some of the other species, but typically you're going to see numbers and problems associated with those numbers with only about four or five species."

He said this spring started out dry, which did contribute to an increase in numbers at first. But one thing grasshoppers do not like, however, is excess moisture. In fact, it can make them sick.

"They're prone to bacterial and fungal infections. And one fungus, in particular, is entomophaga and that can really knock numbers down quite quickly under moist conditions," Tansey noted.

He said in addition to entomophaga and other fungi, grasshoppers are on the menu for a number of different microbes in moist, humid conditions.

"In the case of dry conditions, these contribute to increased numbers because they're not being sicked primarily by the fungi and the bacteria," he said. "Of course we had dry conditions in the spring, which allowed a lot of the eggs that were laid in the soil, they hatch in the spring, they pop up as little nymphs."

Tansey said this spring the Ministry received reports of nymphs at high enough numbers in some pastures, and even some acreages, that they did require pest-control measures to be taken.

Late spring rain did seem to decrease the numbers, most likely through direct drowning.

"When you're a quart inch or half an inch, encountering a raindrop can be a life-altering event. It's a lot of water when you're very small," he described. "The water gets into their nesting burrows as well, and that can drown the eggs and drown the young ones, as well as increasing the moisture and exposing them to those pathogens and making them sick. So the late rains seem to have controlled the populations in many areas and reduced their numbers."

Tansey posed an observational theory to explain why it does seem like we're having a grasshopper infestation here in the southeast.

"The areas with the sandier soil, that were less likely to hang on to the moisture, it seems that the populations of some grasshoppers (the ones that I were seeing were primarily two-stripe), were still maintaining at decent numbers," he explained. "So we have had some occurrence of grasshoppers at economic levels late in the summer, but it's far from an outbreak."

The province offers a yearly grasshopper forecast, which can be found HERE.